David Foster Wallace · This is Water

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?" This is a standard requirement of U.S. liberal arts education — the well-known "teaching you how to think." None of us really understand what this cliché means. Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education — at least in my own case — is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize. Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of. Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe. The world as I experience it is right there in front of me. But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this. Or not. You can just go on autopilot and follow your default setting. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline. It means being able to truly care about other people. It means being able to exercise choice, consciously. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, you wade through boredom and frustration — the checkout line, the crowded aisles, the traffic. If you are inured to this kind of tedium, you have chosen to remain unconscious. Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about "teaching you how to think" is really about learning how to be attuned to what matters — and exercising that choice, consciously, every single day. This is water. This is water.