David Foster Wallace This Is Water Summary

In “This Is Water”, David Foster Wallace discusses his own definition of freedom, which involves choosing to be aware of and to care for the people who surround you. One of the necessities to be free is to choose how you think. Personally, I found the words of David Foster Wallace to be reminiscent of my own life, and specifically of experiences in my past. Wallace began the speech, “This Is Water”, with an anecdote about a few fish. Two younger fish are swimming and they happen to cross paths with an older fish, who asks them how the water is. The younger fish continue to swim along until they come to a halt and ask themselves, “What the hell is water?” (Wallace 132). The essence of this story is that often times, the most obvious and important realities are the

People are often subjects to a mechanical lifestyle, which can drag them along. They wake up, eat, work, sleep, and repeat. When driving to work one day, we may be cut off by someone. It is within our default setting to find annoyance with that person. Although, Wallace proposes that circumstances such as that are inevitable. They are a factor of adult life, and although that might not be inspiring, there is a way to combat those situations. That one way, as proposed by Wallace, is the notion of choice. In the speech, Wallace asserts, “The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re going to try to see it” (Wallace 134). We have the ability to choose how we think and perceive things. If we are aware enough, we can thus think differently about the people around us and take their lives into our realm. Maybe the person who cut us off is taking their sick child to the hospital. It may be unlikely, but it isn’t impossible. As Wallace says, “The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and