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Goodpain Season 02 Episode 014: Sacred Inconvenience Pt. II, David Foster Wallace
37 Plays19 days ago
We will return next week with more long form conversations, however, this week we continue borrowing from another voice to explore the notion of sacred inconvenience, or staying present and aware to living right now. This week we borrow the 2005 commencement address delivered to Kenyon College. The author and speaker is the late author David Foster Wallace, and the address is titled, "This is Water."
To watch a creative version of the speech, please visit the following link: This is Water, by David Foster Wallace
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Good Pain'
00:00:01
Speaker
I'm Jeremy. And I'm Tyler. Welcome to Good Pain, where we talk about life's true intensities without pretending they're easy solve. What if the things we're told to fix, optimize, or get over are actually where the real wisdom lives?
00:00:14
Speaker
Each week we gather for the kind of honest conversations you desire to be a part of more often about the relentless demands, the unexpected grief, the quiet victories, and everything in between. Because maybe, just maybe, the answer isn't to eliminate the hard stuff, it's to find the good in
Exploration of 'Sacred Inconvenience'
00:00:30
Speaker
it. Welcome to the conversation.
00:00:43
Speaker
Last week, we took a break from our long-form conversations to listen to a talk given by Kurt Vonnegut around sacred inconvenience and how we can live more in the present moment. And we continue that exploration this week with part two of Sacred Inconvenience, this time borrowing from the voice of David Foster Wallace.
00:01:05
Speaker
If you're familiar with Wallace, you also understand that Wallace is no longer with us. Wallace took his own life several years ago. Before he did that, he gave this speech, a commencement address to the students, the graduating class of Kenyon College in 2005.
David Foster Wallace's Kenyon College Address
00:01:24
Speaker
The fact that we know what happened to Wallace contextualizes the wisdom that he shares here even more.
00:01:32
Speaker
We will be returning to our long-form conversations next week, and we'll have three or four more of those conversations, some that we are conducting this week, that will take us to the end of this season.
00:01:44
Speaker
Season two isn't in our rearview mirror yet. However... We are also already looking towards season three, where we will be discussing entirely new topic and bringing on a new set of guests. Jeremy and I will be having additional conversations around something we're really excited to be discussing, which is art and creative expression. With those things on the horizon, the here and now is David Foster Wallace's talk, This is Water.
00:02:14
Speaker
There are these two young fish swimming along. and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way who nods at them and says, morning boys, how's the water? And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, what the hell is water?
00:02:33
Speaker
The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude.
00:02:44
Speaker
But the fact is that in the day-to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning.
00:02:56
Speaker
Of course, the main requirement of speeches like this is that I'm supposed to talk about your liberal arts education's meaning to try to explain why the degree you're about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff.
00:03:11
Speaker
So let's talk about the single most pervasive cliche in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about, quote, teaching you how to think.
00:03:25
Speaker
If you're like me as a student, you've never liked hearing this. And you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you've needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think.
00:03:40
Speaker
But I'm going to posit to you that the liberal arts cliche turns out not to be insulting at all. Because the really significant education in thinking that we're supposed to get in a place like this isn't really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about.
00:03:55
Speaker
If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, I'd ask you to think about fish and water and to bracket for just a few minutes your skepticism about the value of the totally obvious.
Choosing What to Think
00:04:09
Speaker
Teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean to be just a little less arrogant, to have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties, because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.
00:04:28
Speaker
I have learned this the hard way. as I predict you graduates will too. Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of. Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realist, most vivid, and important person in existence.
00:04:51
Speaker
We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially repulsive, but it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hardwired into our boards at birth.
00:05:04
Speaker
Think about it. There is no experience you have had that you are not at the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of you or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV or your monitor, and so on.
00:05:21
Speaker
Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real. Please don't worry that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other directedness or all the so-called virtues.
00:05:36
Speaker
This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural hardwired default setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.
Value of Liberal Arts Education
00:05:54
Speaker
People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being well-adjusted. which I suggest to you is not an accidental term. Given the triumphant academic setting here, an obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default setting involves actual knowledge or intellect.
00:06:13
Speaker
This question gets very tricky. Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education, at least in my own case, is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff.
00:06:25
Speaker
to get lost in abstract arguments inside my head instead of simply paying attention to what's going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me. As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head.
00:06:45
Speaker
may be happening right now. 20 years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliche about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea.
00:06:59
Speaker
Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.
00:07:14
Speaker
Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about.
Choosing Perspectives in Life
00:07:27
Speaker
How to keep from going 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.
00:07:44
Speaker
That may sound like hyperbole or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what day in, day out really means.
00:07:58
Speaker
There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration.
00:08:10
Speaker
The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about. By way of example, let's say it's an average adult day and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging white collar college graduate job, and you work hard for eight or 10 hours, and at the end of the day you're tired and somewhat stressed, and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour and then hit the sack early because of course you have to get up the next day and do it all again.
00:08:36
Speaker
But then you remember there's no food at home. You haven't had time to shop this week because of your challenging job. And so now, after work, you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket.
00:08:47
Speaker
It's the end of a work day, and the traffic is apt to be very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should. And when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course, it's the time of day when all the other people with jobs should also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping.
00:09:03
Speaker
And the store 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, over-lit stores, confusing aisles to find the stuff you want.
00:09:21
Speaker
And you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts, etc., etc., cutting stuff out because it's a long ceremony. And eventually 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.
00:09:39
Speaker
So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can't take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.
00:09:56
Speaker
But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line's front, and you pay for your food, and get told to have a nice day in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. And then you have to take your creepy, flimsy plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls madly to the left all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot.
00:10:17
Speaker
And then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive rush hour traffic, et ceterat etc., etc. Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn't yet been part of you graduates' actual life routine.
00:10:31
Speaker
Day after week, after month, after year. But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides.
00:10:42
Speaker
But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is going to come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines
Perception and Reaction in Daily Life
00:10:54
Speaker
give me time to think.
00:10:56
Speaker
And if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me.
00:11:10
Speaker
About my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home. And it's going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way?
00:11:23
Speaker
And look at how repulsive most of them are and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and non-human they seem in the checkout line. Or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line.
00:11:35
Speaker
And look at how deeply, personally unfair this is. If I choose to think this way in the store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except saying thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn't have to be a choice.
00:11:50
Speaker
It is my natural default setting. It's the automatic 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.
00:12:08
Speaker
The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stuck and idling in my way. It's not impossible that some of these people in SUVs have been in horrible auto accidents in the past and now find driving so terrifying that the therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive.
00:12:32
Speaker
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 way bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am. It is actually I who am in his way.
00:12:49
Speaker
Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am. And that some of these people probably have much harder, more tedious, or painful lives than I do.
00:13:03
Speaker
Again, please don't think I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you're supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it's hard. It takes will and effort.
00:13:15
Speaker
And if you are like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat out won't want to. But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line.
00:13:32
Speaker
Maybe she's not usually like this. Maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of her husband who's dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicles department who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating red tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness.
Awareness and Finding Meaning
00:13:52
Speaker
Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important, if you want to operate on your default setting,
00:14:08
Speaker
then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options.
00:14:21
Speaker
It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer hell-type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars.
00:14:35
Speaker
Love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down. Not that that mystical stuff's necessarily true. The only thing that's capital T true is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it.
00:14:50
Speaker
This, I submit, is the freedom of real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.
00:15:03
Speaker
Because here's something else that's weird but true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping.
00:15:14
Speaker
Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And a compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual type thing to worship be it JC or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan Mother Goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some inviolable set of ethical principles, is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.
00:15:37
Speaker
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. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly.
00:15:52
Speaker
And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, cliches, epigrams, parables, the skeleton of every great story.
00:16:10
Speaker
The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power. You will end up feeling weak and afraid. And you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear.
00:16:23
Speaker
Worship your intellect. Being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful. It is that they are unconscious.
00:16:39
Speaker
They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.
00:16:52
Speaker
And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along on the fuel of fear and anger and frustration and craving and the worship of self.
00:17:08
Speaker
Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms.
00:17:20
Speaker
alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course, there are all different kinds of freedom. And the kind that is most precious, you will not hear much talked about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and displaying.
00:17:37
Speaker
The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over.
00:17:49
Speaker
in myriad petty little unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.
00:18:11
Speaker
I
Conclusion: The 'Capital T Truth'
00:18:12
Speaker
know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital T Truth with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away.
00:18:26
Speaker
You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don't just dismiss it as some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.
00:18:42
Speaker
The capital T Truth is about life before death. It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge and everything to do with simple awareness.
00:18:55
Speaker
Awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over, this is water.
00:19:07
Speaker
This is water. Thank you for sitting with us in this conversation, for bringing your own story, your own questions, and your own hard-won wisdom to what we're building together.
00:19:19
Speaker
If you want to keep this going, subscribe to Good Pain on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, where you can also leave us a review that helps others find their way to these conversations. And for weekly doses of conversations that go beyond quick fixes or surface level advice, subscribe to our kindling newsletter at goodpainco.com.
00:19:38
Speaker
Good Pain is recorded in Colorado on Arapaho, Ute, and Cheyenne ancestral lands. And let's remember, we are not alone in this. Our struggle is not our shame.
00:19:50
Speaker
Whatever we are carrying today, we don't have to carry it alone. We will see you next time.