Eleven years ago this past May a man by the name of David Foster Wallace, an author and philosopher gave a commencement speech at Kenyon College and since that day it has been seen as the standard for what commencement speeches should be.  In the Speech, “This is Water,” he turns the normal, “Teaching you how to think” narrative given by most liberal arts colleges on its head, letting students know that the real value of their degree is not in the paper that they will receive from the college, not the job you get after college, or that you will excel at the job you do get, but more importantly lets the students know that the real value of that degree is in how they can now think and what they choose to focus on so to make the day-to-day of life not so miserable. The speech itself is not long in its length but the words and thoughts David Foster Wallace portrays to the students are in depth and carry extreme weight. Some will interpret the speech as dark and cold, the ramblings of a philosophical nut who has lost touch with reality a bit when in reality Wallace is simply using dark imagery to show just how bad life can become when you don’t choose to think for yourself but simply live through ones “default setting,” and by doing that one is just wasting their days until they come to an end. There are those of us who have much different interpretation of the speech. There is hope, there is a man trying to share the real wealth of life, a man telling people the truth of the world, letting individuals know that yes, life can be rough, but is it really so horrifying? Is complaining about every little thing as if we have a right to do so actually the right thing to do? We should all realize that there are many different ways to live our lives, but one commonality does exist to everyone, the choices we make daily. We can choose to be educated and to fill our minds with positive thoughts no matter the situation or we can choose to see everything as a negative and stay angry off all the time and watch the days get longer and longer till it finally ends. 

Early on page three, Wallace finishes explaining that though it took him nearly twenty years his liberal arts degree taught him something that was more valuable than anything else, “Learning how to think” (Wallace 3). The idea of learning how to think, to have control over what you care about, learn about, the mindset in which you have in every day life. There is so much hope and value in those words. It may not seem like it by just looking at it, but think about everything that comes with controlling your mind. By choosing to not attempt to “learn how to think” most of us in the words of Wallace will go, “through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default-setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone, day in and day out” (Wallace 3). Though his wording seems dark, he offers an uplifting and not easy, but attainable solution to this miserable life. We can choose to get rid of the every day grogginess that comes with a new sunrise, we can choose to get up and get things accomplished, to help others before ourselves, to be open minded at all times, to give our lives purpose. Through discipline we can gain a freedom like no other. It is uplifting and powerful. 

Towards the middle of page four Wallace again gets back into his dark imagery describing his dreadful trips to the store that is, “hideously, fluorescently lit, and infused with soul-killing Muzak or corporate pop, and it's pretty much the last place you want to be, but you can't just get in and quickly out: You have to wander all over the huge, overlit store's crowded aisles to find the stuff you want, and you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts, and of course there are also the glacially slow old people and the spacey people and the ADHD kids who all block the aisle and you have to grit your teeth and try to be polite as you ask them to let you by, and eventually, finally, you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren't enough checkout lanes open even though it's the end-of-the-day-rush, so the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating, but you can't take your fury out on the frantic lady working the register.”(Wallace 4). This dark image of the super market by Wallace alone is enough to make anyone reading the speech convinced that this is just another rant of a man who is down and out and wants to let others know about it. In true Wallace fashion he follows up this dark and dreadful super market experience by letting everyone know that the reaction he described in the store was nothing more than a choice. “Thinking this way is my natural default-setting. It's the automatic, unconscious way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities” (Wallace 4). Through all of the dark that exists in this text look for the light. Choice, a key word that Wallace wants everyone to hear and understand. Every situation in life is going to come with choices. We can choose to be negative and see everything as our personal hell or we can sit back and think for a second and to think about what’s happening around us. The ability to have choice is motivating and Wallace wants everyone to realize there is a better way to live your life, does he use some very dark situations, yes, but by showing you the darkness and then revealing there is a way to the light it is hard to not see the text as uplifting.

“This is Water” by David Foster Wallace is a piece that is seen in different ways. Many choose to see it as a dark and dreary image of what life after college became for a man who some would say fell off the wagon. Others would say it is what all college commencement speeches should be, a real down to earth and truthful piece to show the students off to their new lives after college. To me I saw it a little different. I saw the underlying factors that contributed to the darker messages in the speech for a calling to be better. Refuse the idea of being a mindless drone with no aspirations, but to want more for yourself and others. Do not concern yourself with mindless nonsense but choose to control your mind and the things you let inside, to always seek knowledge, to get up early and get things accomplished, to help others more than yourself, to live with a purpose. We only have one death so why waste it on a selfish, and boring life.


 