As a man, David Foster Wallace had it all figured out, or so it seemed. He knew that going through life constantly stressing about small situations was not the way to go about it, and he was right. But what he thought should be done is considering what others have gone through, which is what I believe to be the wrong thing. As a man that seemed to have it all figured out nobody expected the tragic act of suicide carried out by him. The fact that he truly did not have it all figured out and was not happy in his life lead me to the idea that people are in their default settings for a reason. A person has the default setting of always putting themselves first because that is what makes them happy. As David Foster Wallace ended his speech, he said to the graduates: 

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.

I wish you way more than luck. (Wallace page XVII)

This could be seen as just a way of hoping the students the best, but I see it as a reflection of the struggles that David Foster Wallace has gone through in his life. The fact that he directly says that “it is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out” shows that he has struggled with it himself. Another thing he says to the graduates that shows the difficulty of living this way is “I wish you way more than luck.” David Foster Wallace ends his speech here because that is something that really makes the listener think. It is just another way of showing that life as an adult truly is something people struggle with besides directly saying it is difficult. The reason that life as an adult and breaking the default settings that David Foster Wallace speaks of is because we are not meant to.

Breaking the default settings would result in whenever something bad happens in your day, you think about what the person caused that unhappiness for you is dealing with. David Foster Wallace names some scenarios:

In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it’s not impossible that some of these people in SUV’s have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he’s trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he’s in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.

While something like this could very well be true, it’s very unlikely that it actually is the case. Since there is a small likelihood of this, that’s not the way people should think. It devalues their happiness and puts the people who cut them off or sit in their way in large SUV’s before themselves. The odds that a person has just cut you off because they are an aggressive driver and they believe you are driving too slow is most likely the case. Just how the odds that the person idling in front of you is more likely to be looking down on their phones or be distracted by something that they shouldn’t be rather than being terrified of driving. I believe that when a person knows why things happen to them, rather than speculating that a person’s needs come before theirs, that will lead to them accepting it better and although they may be unhappy for the short term while they get over getting cut off, in the long term they will live a happier life.

When David Foster Wallace said he could force himself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket’s checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as he is, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than he does, he should because they probably do. In life, people have their own struggles in life and no matter how bad you think you have it, somebody has probably got it worse. While you had a bad day at work, somebody probably just got fired. This is just the way humans are. They think selfishly most of the time and that’s why when somebody partakes in selfless acts they are commended greatly. It is not normal for somebody to act that way so it surprises everybody when somebody does. This is also why everyone goes through their life dreary as he explains, because the struggles of the adult life is dreary, and no matter how you think about it and change your mindset, you most likely won’t be able to change that fact.
