Annotation of David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water” Speech

In his commencement speech to Kenyon college’s 2005 graduating class David Foster Wallace brings up key practices to surviving “the outside world”; awareness and open-mindedness. Wallace does not sugar coat any of the harsh realities that surely away the soon to be graduates; he uses a polarizing, bleak description of a supermarket to illustrate how we are all inevitably equalized in boredom. Most importantly he touches upon how the mundane can wear thin our empathy and consideration for others. I identified immensely with everything that Wallace spoke of in this speech and frankly found it confronting to know that someone shares my same ideas and frustrations. He used the analogy of a wise old fish asking two younger fish “How’s the water?” and the two young fish responded, “What the hell is water?”. He related this to how we, as humans, rarely look up to question and take in our present reality. It is quite easy for us to click on the autopilot and coast through life without giving a second thought to the people that surround us who make up our reality. I was moved by David Foster Wallace’s choice to truly connect with the students and present them in such a way that was consumable and relatable. He possessed the scathing wit and the comfortable dialogue to truly get his point across. Wallace used no words to put himself in a place of authority; he presented ideas and issues that the modern adult faces day to day. He addressed the aspect of life that is often times most difficult, the moments which grind down our patience with other human beings and place ourselves at the center of the universe. It is a refreshing awareness that he poses to his audience about challenging the pessimistic default setting in our brains and challenging ourselves to find a brighter mindset for the sake of our own sanity.