This is Water - Parts 1&2
Ron: This is a great speech. I recommend listening to it.
These two 10 minute videos were uploaded by CantEatBabies on Oct 12, 2010:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5THXa_H_N8&feature=player_embedded
And: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSAzbSQqals&feature=related
Uploader's comment:
A speech given by David Foster Wallace (R.I.P.) at the 2005 Kenyon College commencement ceremony.
Some of the Text:
You get to decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship... In the day to day trenches of adult life there is no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. 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 ... is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive... The insidious thing about these [non-spiritual] forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful. It is that they are unconscious. They're 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 are doing... There are all different kinds of freedom and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and display. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline. And being able to truly care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad, petty, unsexy ways, everyday. THAT is real freedom. THAT is being educated and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness. The default setting...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. 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. This is water'. It is unimaginably hard to do this. To stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out... your education really IS the job of a lifetime and it commences, NOW. - David Foster Wallace
A comment on youtube:
Read some of his short stories. He's an even better writer than he is a speaker, hard as it is to believe. Infinite Jest is one of the most heartfelt books ever written. I'd also recommend his essay collections: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, and Consider the Lobster. He addresses what it means to be young and living in the U.S. in an age of absolute confusion. And he manages to find heart beneath the seemingly self-destructive behavior, and he reminds us, This is water
RELATED ARTICLE:
Eckhart Tolle The Power of Now Chapter 8 - Love and Relationships. See: http://abundanthope.net/pages/Other_Spiritual_Pieces_68/Eckhart-Tolle-The-Power-of-Now-Chapter-8---Love-and-Relationships.shtml
