A few weeks ago I discovered thanks to Elizabeth Collins the 2005 Commencement speech of writer David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College. The speech deserves mention not only because it is very good (more on that later), but also because it is one of the very few public speeches Foster Wallace gave before committing suicide in 2008.
The speech is, broadly speaking, on life, work and adulthood or, in the words of a writer for the New York Times, "the essential lonesomeness of adult life". It starts with a parable about an old fish and two young fish (who are so conditioned to be in water they don't realize what it is, which leads Foster Wallace to a definition of liberal education as learning how to think, i.e., recognizing the water around us).
I also liked his take on the "Capital T-Truth", the description of after-work grocery shopping (!) and his comment that "[t]here happen to be whole large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration."
I imagine these words have only gained accuracy in the 6 years since Foster Wallace made his speech, since more and more well-trained and eager college graduates find themselves under-utilized - their earning power possibly diminished for years to come - due to the economic situation. (I have taught many good students over the years, most of whom find jobs without too much difficulty, and even then I always wonder whether the companies that hire them will give them enough of a chance to display the range of their talents.)
Most importantly, the "conscious decision about how to think" provides graduates with some guidelines on how to deal with these feelings. The solution sounds trite, but as Foster Wallace explains, choosing to believe in alternate, kinder scenarios about the people you see at the store - the people who delay you at the store when you're tired and want to get home and eat and sleep before yet another day - is the first step in the never-ending quest to remain grounded and fight disillusionment in spite of the (occasional? repeated?) dreariness of everyday life. And hopefully every day becomes a good one once people have learned that the only thing that matters is the way they react to what happens to them, although Foster Wallace is not quite as positive.
In DFW's words: "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."
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