David Foster Wallace - This is Water

Recently, I read a transcript of David Foster Wallace’s speech called This is Water, and a particular sentence really stood out to me. Foster discusses the power that your mindset holds over the way you live your life, and he states, “you get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t.” This sentence was my absolute favorite, because it discusses the fact that we as people have the ability to brush things off in life and control how we get affected by certain moments. We have the ability to say to ourselves “I’m not going to let this bother me” and truly mean it. We continue to push forward and persevere, simply by coaching ourselves to relinquish resentful feelings we hold, which is a very powerful strength that only human beings are capable of. I think we take this tool for granted. Often times, we get so caught up in little details that irk us throughout the day that we forget we can say to ourselves, “hey it’s not a big deal everything is going to be fine,” and carry through to instantly change our moods. I know I’m guilty of not doing this, but Foster’s speech was really mind altering and made me rethink everything about my perspective on life. Unfortunately, Foster committed suicide in 2008 at the age of 46. He seemed like a very intellectually aware man with a deep understanding of the way the human mind works; I wish more people heard his impactful speech. 

Featured below is a short film that condenses Foster’s speech into a creative visual aid that contains some fantastic excerpts. Check it out!


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