"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?"
My aunt gave me "This Is Water" by David Foster Wallace as a graduation gift. It is one of those pretty little books that you won't read and you probably won't even open, but it looks pretty. Up until now, "This Is Water" has been just that, a decoration on my shelf.
On May 4, 2013 I sat on the quad in my fluorescent purple and gold clown robes, a little tipsy off of breakfast mimosas. Sitting there amongst rows and rows of my peers was irritating and almost felt like a waste of time. I just wanted to find my friends and celebrate, but the ceremony dragged on. When my major was called I handed some teacher I had never seen before a note card with my name on it so that they could announce me as I was ushered across the stage. I paused only for a moment so that the dean could hand me a piece of paper and smile big for the photographer. The piece of paper said something along the lines of "Congratulations, you are officially an alumni of James Madison University. Now give us your money." Maybe in a more discreet way, though. When all 500 some of the College of Arts and Letters graduates had received their measly piece of paper, the dean said "Congratulations class of 2013!" And that was it.
When it comes time to graduate, we hear countless cliché motivational speeches that we become stupid with this false reality. We actually start to think that the real world is all rainbows and butterflies, but when you have to wake up at 6 am every morning, sit in two hours of traffic to and from work, going to the grocery store is the highlight of your week, and your entire paycheck goes to bills, you stand there like an idiot saying to yourself, "Sh*t, they lied and I believed them."
When I first pulled "This Is Water" off the shelf, I felt scholarly in a school girl kind of way. Why yes, I will read this pretty book by candlelight on this rainy afternoon with a cup of tea, how sophisticated of me. So this past weekend as my sophisticated self flipped through this pretty little book, I found myself wishing that someone had said to me what Wallace said to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College. Wallace was raw and harsh, even gruesome at some points. Talk about adding insult to injury, but that painful truth is about as real as the real world will ever be. I appreciated every word.
"The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. That is being taught how to think...It is about making it to thirty, or maybe even fifty, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about the real value of a real education, which has nothing to do with grades or degrees and everything to do with simple awareness - awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over 'This is water.' 'This is water.'"
Right now we are fish. We are flopping around trying to make our way back to the water, but no matter how much we thrash and flail, we may only ever make it back if we take a moment to look around and notice that we already are in the water.
xo c
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