How Does 'This Is Water' Promote A Compassionate Life?

Reading 'This Is Water' feels like being handed a mirror that reflects the mundane routines we often drown in without realizing it. David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech-turned-essay isn’t just about awareness; it’s about the exhausting, daily choice to resist default-setting—letting our brains autopilot through irritation at traffic jams or supermarket queues. The real lesson? You can choose to see the checkout line as a shared human experience rather than a personal inconvenience. It’s exhausting work, but that’s the point: empathy and meaning aren’t passive states. They’re muscles you flex, even when it’s easier to default to cynicism. What sticks with me most is Wallace’s brutal honesty about education’s purpose. It’s not about knowledge accumulation but learning 'how to think'—which really means learning how to wrestle your ego into submission. The 'water' metaphor isn’t just poetic; it’s a reminder that the most obvious realities (like the fact that everyone around you has inner lives as vivid as yours) are the hardest to perceive. I revisit this whenever I catch myself mentally narrating life as if I’m the main character and everyone else is an NPC.

During my commute yesterday I found myself thinking about 'This is Water' and how it feels like a cheat code for everyday mindfulness. David Foster Wallace's core idea — that the default setting of our minds runs on autopilot judgments and self-centered narratives — maps so cleanly onto modern mindfulness practices. Instead of meditation apps promising zen in five minutes, 'This is Water' asks a quieter question: what do you choose to pay attention to? That resonated with me because attention is the currency of both a hectic city commute and a binge-watching session of 'Neon Genesis Evangelion' where every frame demands focus. What I love is how the speech complements formal techniques: when I sit for a short breath-count, I’m practicing the same freedom Wallace talks about — choosing perspective. Mindfulness gives a toolkit (breathing, body scans, noting thoughts), while 'This is Water' gives the ethic behind the tools — to be compassionate, to resist default solipsism. It’s practical too: pausing for three breaths before responding to an angry email or taking a mindful snack break instead of scrolling through social feeds can shift my whole day. So for me these ideas blend into a daily rhythm: small, intentional moments of noticing, mixed with a broader project of choosing kindness. The payoff isn’t dramatic enlightenment; it’s less reactivity, more curiosity, and the occasional surprising sense that life, even in traffic or on the 7th episode of a show, can be inhabited with a little more grace. I keep coming back to it — it’s oddly motivating.