In 2005, David Foster Wallace gave a commencement speech called “This is Water” to the Keyon College graduating class. In his speech, David Foster Wallace talks about the word “worship” and how it can be perceived in various ways based on the reader’s personal beliefs and backgrounds. Wallace argues that everyone worships something. However, it is what you worship that defines you. There are positive forms of worship and there are negative forms of worship. What you choose to worship nonetheless, whether it is a God, money, or beauty, causes you to be selective about what you see and how you value the world around you. The descriptive language that Wallace uses in his speech preaches that everyone needs to worship something “bigger” in order to be happy and content in life. 

According to Wallace, Religious worshipping is a positive form of worship because it sets you free; “the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that anything else you worship will eat you alive.” In Wallace’s speech, he talks about how what you worship is in your “default settings.” Worshipping a god is a positive form of worship because it is who we look to for direction and guidance. We look to God for guidance because it makes us feel safe and as if our fate is in good hands. This type of worship is “compelling” because God shows us an “inviolable” devotion. His grace for us has never been broken and will never be broken. When we worship a god or spiritual-type we develop healthy traits such as forgiveness, kindness, love, and purity instead of depraved traits, such as greed and jealously.  In today’s present culture we are so consumed on wanting and craving more in life that these things we worship are never enough therefore, it “eats us alive.” 

Although worshipping a religious figure is a positive form of worship there are still negative ways to worship too. “If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough.” We live in a society where quantity surpasses quality in all aspects of life. Our social values say that what you have determines who you are. If you have a yacht, a plane, and three houses people will envy you. Wallace makes a point in the text, saying that, “the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in the pool of fear and frustration and craving and worship of self.” People who worship money and material things have an obsession with money. They feel as if they “never have enough” and need some sort of signal to know if they are doing well in life, using money is one of the most immediate ways. They “crave” the need to worship money because they think that money will give them “power.” Little do they know that their need for power is their sole foundation for their “pool of fear and frustration” in life. In order for people who worship money to “tap real meaning in life” they feel as if they need to own as many assets as possible so they can prove to others that they are “the very best.” When this obsessive life style fails they are left feeling unhappy and lost. 

Just like worshipping money and material things, worshipping beauty can lead you to feeling unsatisfied. “Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.” In today’s society people obtain an idea of beauty based off of the image the media portrays of the “perfect individual.” People think that if they reach this “perfect image” they will feel happy and successful. But in actuality, it lowers their self-esteem because, while they always strive to be somebody they are not, they choose to focus on temporary qualities that do not matter. As you get older there are different expectations for how you should look at your particular age. So when you worship beauty and attempt to be perfect, but fail, you end up feeling empty and dead inside. This is what Foster means when he says that in your life you will “die a million deaths before time and age finally grieve you.” In the end this obsession with physical beauty can be compared to the worship of money because the individual is trying to gain peace and satisfaction in themselves. We worship money and beauty for emotional reasons such as self-esteem and self-image in order for us to feel a sense of belonging and, when we cannot exceed society’s expectations, we feel “ugly.” 

In “This is Water” David Foster Wallace describes the word worship in three different ways. He uses God to support a positive form of worship, while using money and beauty as two negative forms. In today’s present culture we have dismissed this idea of “real freedom,” where societies rules and standards don’t exist and you can truly be who you are without the care of being judged. If we all make the decision to stop worshipping superficial and petty qualities and focus on worshipping something “bigger” like a god or spiritual figure, then we will eventually know “real freedom.” Making this decision is what will make us happy and content in life because we will not adjust who we are in order to match societies expectations. Wallace preaches these different types of worship to warn the graduates of Keyon College to stay alert and cautious of their decisions in life so that one day they can be proud of where they end up. 