![]() 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?”īefore seeing how Wallace spins this, let’s think about this metaphor. 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. Greetings, parents and congratulations to Kenyon’s graduating class of 2005. He begins with a short Aesop-like fable of talking animals, but the actual takeaway is harder to drill down to than “Slow and steady wins the race.” ![]() You are free to read or listen to it at your leisure, but today we are going to look at one of the key lessons that Wallace focuses in on as advice to his young adult listeners. Wallace’s speech has since then been distributed in print and recording under the title This is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life. Wallace was (and still is) considered a deeply influential voice in American literature, but it was very likely that only a handful of people with humanities degrees would have had a clear idea of who they were hearing from. This is the environment of expectations in which David Foster Wallace gave a commencement speech in 2005 at Kenyon College. Regardless, they tend to be speeches of the best intentions delivered to a group of people convinced they have just spent four years in order for such advice to be beneath them. ![]() In some occasions, the speaker is more than one generation removed from their audience and it might not be quite clear if their advice is relevant. A speaker is asked to deliver a speech to a group of college seniors moving on into the “adult world.” Some of the students may be totally oblivious to who this speaker is.
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