david foster wallace “this is water” 2005 kenyon commencement speech part 1 (part 2)

“if you are automatically sure that you know what reality is, and who and what is really important, if you want to operate on your default setting, than you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying.  but if you really learn how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options.  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 forces that lift the stars - love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.  not that that mystical oneness is true.  the only thing that’s True is that you get to decide how you’re going to try to see it.”