Responce to 6th Article

David Foster Wallace commencement address at Kenyon College


                This article was rather interesting in having discussion of our daily lives. It was like a story told from part of a book instead of a commencement speech. I understood it telling the students to prepare for the working life after college. It had some interesting ideas or metaphors. In the beginning he tells us of the two young fish passing the old fish. The old fish as them how the water is and they say to themselves, what the hell is water. I think the metaphor here is how the younger generation does not pay attention to its surroundings. Most of us don’t pay attention to others during our daily routine activities. As he notes, we travel from work exhausted from the day and then get up and do it again the next day. We mainly focus on ourselves during our busy lives. It reminded me of a subject from a philosophy lecture about Egoism and Individualism. We think of ourselves more than we do of others. For instance he says the guy in his story had to run to the grocery store to get some items for dinner. The guy is rushed through the crowded store to wait in a long checkout line, thinking of himself. It is only when he has the time to stop and think for a second when he notices others just like him trying to do the same thing. Maybe they are in a bigger hurry, as he notes the Hummer that cut him off in traffic, or the lady in line that need to tend to her husband. I think we ought to stop and think of others sometimes. It gives us a perspective on life ignoring the mundane things that we go through. I see this article relating to the previous on brushing our teeth. I become more aware of my surroundings when I stop to ponder on what’s going on around me at the moment. I see things in a different perspective and maybe notice something out of the ordinary. I would like to start noticing in this new light to see an artistic side of life around me. I would like to use this to create some form of art form. After all, truth is about life before death.

Here is the Article