"This is water" Speech by David Wallace

I recently came across this speech from a psychologist/therapist, and was completely hooked and couldn't get away like any great speech by any famous with simple listening and tossing aside. I ended it up with several rounds a day. The more I paid attention to the sentences and stories, or more accurately the meaning behind, the more I was inspired.

First and foremost, this is bio of David Foster Wallace.

David Foster Wallace (1962 – 2008) was an American author whose first novel is titled The Broom of the System (1987). He is perhaps best known as the author of his second novel, the massive Infinite Jest (1996). Wallace was also a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California (moving there in 2002) as well as a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship (1997). His published writing includes essays, journalism, short stories, the unfinished novel The Pale King (2011), and the commencement speech This is Water (2005).

We wouldn't had this wisdom without David pointing out the bland truth. It's his own experiences and ability to see through those experiences to reflect on how we should think to lead a more fulfilling life. Here I am to share my inspiration of the below quotes with my complete heart and soul.

Be skeptical about the value of the totally obvious.

Religious dogmatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's unbeliever: BLIND CERTAINTY, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up. To be a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties.

This is a short yet powerful reminder to our day to day life. It's not just about challenging dogmas that we hear of every now and then in a commencement speech or life-coaching session. It's to rethink what's hard-wired in our system, or something we are born with, or the wisdom we are so accustomed to even think twice. It's not an easy piece of advice but too important to ignore. To build such a mindset, everyone needs a lifetime to master. David went on to point out the way to do so, de-centralize oneself to have a better thinking for guidance. Being empathetic and compassionate is all towards recipients rather than oneself. David's "to be less about YOU" is to make way not only to other people around you, but also yourself. That's not to way we all shall carry on our lives without listening to our own hearts, but rather to rethink every possible way we live to make sense of everything happening.

Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe;the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think abou this sort of natural, basic self-centredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It's our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it:there's no experience you have had that you are not the absolute centre of . The world as you experience its there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor and so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.

The old Cliche "the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master. It's extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotised by the constant monologue inside your own head.

Sometimes I wonder if David's not gone through depression and those experiences he struggled with, would he be so alert and clear about this? There's a saying "dawn after the long darkness". The story that opened up his speech was simplicity with wisdom. People are accepting the common knowledge of life without asking any question, just like many parents here in China who are anxious about their kids' exam result and future endeavour, as though the norm is the right thing to follow, that kids should go through all the pre-arranged training via attending academic tutuoring lessons, instrumental lessons and other ECAs at the age starting from 5 or 6, and eventually secure a ticket to university of their dreams (not the kids') without really asking themselves what success means to them.

Have we asked ourselves this question? What kind of adult life do we want our kids to have? Whatever we are doing, are we really preparing them to face the hard truth about the future? Have we paid attention the little thing that drew their mind away besides the expected excellency towards Ivy leagues?

As a young parent, I am still on the quest for the answer. If I keep searching and looking into my heart, eventually I will get there. To get the meaning of "water" and to know how I feel around it. I strongly believe it so.

《This is Water》中英文对照演讲稿 (2016-03-18 15:12:05) 转载

David Foster Wallace - Commencement Speech atKenyon College

Transcription

of the 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address - May21,2005

David Foster Wallace - Kenyon College 毕业典礼致辞（2005年5月21日）

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’sthe water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually oneof them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

有两条年轻的鱼迎面遇到一条老鱼。老鱼点头打招呼道 “早上好呀，孩子们。这水怎么样？“ 两条年轻的鱼继续游了一会儿，终于其中一条忍不住看看另一条说道 ”什么他妈的是‘水’呀？“

This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment ofdidactic little parable-ish stories. The story [“thing”] turns out to be one ofthe better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you’re worriedthat I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining whatwater is to you younger fish, please don’t be. I am not the wise old fish. Thepoint of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realitiesare often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an Englishsentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that inthe day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life ordeath importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovelymorning.

美国大学毕业典礼演讲标准的开场通常是一个富于教育意义的小故事。这种故事比起毕业典礼上常见的说教，算是不那么扯淡的。但是请不要以为我视自己为这条老而智慧的鱼，来向你们这些小鱼儿传道什么是水。这个故事只是想说：最明显、最重要的现实往往最不易被察觉或讨论的。当然，这么说出来也只是老生常谈。但是事实是，成年人日复一日的生活中，老生常谈确是关乎生死。这就是我想在这个爽快美好的早晨于你们分享的一点想法。

By way of example, let’s say it’s an average adult day, and you get up in themorning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and youwork hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you’re tired andsomewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper andmaybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, youhave to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there’sno food at home. You haven’t had time to shop this week because of yourchallenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive tothe supermarket. It’s the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be:very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when youfinally get there, th e supermarket is very crowded, because of course it’s thetime of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in somegrocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killingmuzak or corporate pop and it’s pretty much the last place you want to be butyou can’t just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge,over-lit store’s confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have tomaneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people withcarts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony)and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out therearen’t enough check-out lanes open even though it’s the end-of-the-day rush. Sothe checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But youcan’t take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, whois overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses theimagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.

举个例子，就说这是个成人平常的一天。你早早起床，去到充满挑战的应届生白领工作，努力工作了8到10个小时。一天结束后你累了，压力有点大，于是你只想回家吃碗热汤饭，有时间的话放松1小时，然后早早上床。因为你第二天又得早起，度过相同的一天。但是之后你想起家里没吃的了。因为工作繁忙你这周还没来得及买菜，于是下班后现在你还得开车去超市。工作日结束了（是下班高峰），堵车自然是：一塌糊涂。你花了比平常长得多的时间去超市，当你好不容易到了，超市非常拥挤，因为别的上班族当然也在一天中的这个时候挤点时间买菜。

But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line’s front, and you pay for yourfood, and you get told to “Have a nice day” in a voice that is the absolutevoice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags ofgroceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to theleft, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and thenyou have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive,rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera.

但是不管怎样，你最终还是来到了收银台的最前端，为事物付完账，然后被一种毫无疑问如同死亡之音的声音祝福到“祝您一天愉快”。接下来你不得不把那些令人毛骨悚然的，脆弱的，塑料袋装的食品扔进只有一个轮子的令人抓狂的推车中，向左挤过拥挤的，坑坑洼洼乱七八糟的停车场，然后回家路上永远充斥着缓慢、沉重、密密麻麻SUV、交通高峰，等等等等。

Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn’t yet been part of yougraduates’ actual life routine, day after week after month after year.

But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routinesbesides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating craplike this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because thetraffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think,and if I don’t make a conscious decision about how to think and what to payattention to, I’m gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop.Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like thisare really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire tojust get home, and it’s going to seem for all the world like everybody else isjust in my way. And who are all these people in my way? And look at howrepulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed andnonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is thatpeople are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line. And look athow deeply and personally unfair this is.

在场的人肯定都有过类似的经历，但是这还没有成为你们这些毕业生日复一日年复一年的柴米油盐，但是这种日子离你们不远了。而且还有会变得更枯燥的、烦人的、不确定的、无意义的平淡生活。但这不是重点。重点是，刚刚一堆打击你们的糟糕的生活场景正是发挥选择作用的地方。因为，拥堵的交通、熙攘的街道、长长队伍的收银口给了我思考的时间。如果我不能利用这些时间理智地做出决定去思考去关心一些有意义的事情，那么每次购物我都会发疯。我明白人生中遇到的这些事情都是上天注定的。我渴望回家，那些在大街上和我擦肩而过的路人也不都是这么想的么？这些人都是什么样的人？看看这些在收银口排队的人们：他们大部分看起来让你厌恶，蠢蠢的体型硕大，眼中没有一丝生气。有些则不懂规矩让人讨厌，在队伍中央大声讲电话。瞧瞧这些是多么的让人觉得不平。

Or, of course, if I’m in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of mydefault setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgustedabout all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV’s and Hummers and V-12 pickuptrucks, burning their wasteful, selfish, forty-gallon tanks of gas, and I candwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers always seemto be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest[responding here to loud applause] (this is an example of how NOT to think,though) most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest, mostinconsiderate and aggressive drivers. And I can think about how our children’schildren will despise us for wasting all the future’s fuel, and probablyscrewing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and selfish and disgustingwe all are, and how modern consumer society just sucks, and so forth and so on.

又或者，如果我存在于自身具有社会意识的自由艺术形态中，我能将时间耗费在下班时期当中，被那些巨大的、呆蠢的、堵路的烧着它们自私的、浪费的四十加仑的汽油SUV、悍马以及V-12皮卡所恶心，并且我也能接受那些长得奇丑的司机开的在汽车保险杠上贴着爱国或者有宗教意义贴纸这种事实[回应大家的掌声](虽然这也是一个不去思考的例子)，让人厌恶的汽车，被长相奇异、不考虑他人、易动肝火的人开着。我也能想象出我们孩子的孩子将会对我们浪费他们的能源表露出的的失望，也有可能我们还弄糟了全球的气温。我们是如此的自私、愚蠢、讨人嫌，现代文明下的消费者是如此的糟糕。

You get the idea. 你明白了吧。

If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of usdo. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn’thave to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It’s the automatic waythat I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I’moperating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of theworld, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine theworld’s priorities.

如果我选择了在商店里或高速公路上用这种方式来考虑问题，那很好。我们中的很多人会这么想。这么想虽然非常简单且自然，但是并不是必然的选择。这是我默认的自然形态。这种自然的想法，使我在自发且无意识地相信自己是世界的中心时，经历了成人生活的枯燥，沮丧和拥塞那部分。并且，使我紧接下来的需求和感觉是，想知道什么才是决定这个世界的先决条件。

The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think aboutthese kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped andidling in my way, it’s not impossible that some of these people in SUV’s havebeen in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifyingthat their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so theycan feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybebeing driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next tohim, and he’s trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he’s in a bigger,more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.

当然，事实是，总会有完全不同的思路去考虑不同的情形。在交通中，所有的停在或者闲逛挡在我的路上的车辆，有可能有一部分开SUV的人过去曾经经历过严重车祸，他们觉得开车是一件非常恐怖的事情，以至于他们的（心理）医生为了使他们开车时有安全感，劝说他们弄一辆庞大且笨重的SUV。或者，刚才是一位父亲开的Hummer越线超车，因为他要送他旁边座位生病或者受伤的孩子去医院。因此他是在这种更合理的急迫条件下才需要开得比我快：实际上是我挡了他的路。

Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone elsein the supermarket’s checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, andthat some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful livesthan I do.

要么我可以强迫自个儿去考虑这种可能性：每个在超级市场收银台前排队的都和我一样无聊沮丧，甚至有些人过的日子比我更艰难、更繁琐、更痛苦。

Again, please don’t think that I’m giving you moral advice, or that I’m sayingyou are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to justautomatically do it. Because it’s hard. It takes will and effort, and if youare like me, some days you won’t be able to do it, or you just flat out won’twant to.

再次地，请不要觉得我是在给你们什么道德上的建议，或者觉得我是再说你们应该这么想，或者觉得有人在期待你这么做。因为这很难。这样做需要决心和努力。如果你和我一样坚持，总会有一天你会坚持不了，或者你会感到疲惫而放弃。

But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can chooseto look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamedat her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’sbeen up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying ofbone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicledepartment, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific,infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness.Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It justdepends what you what to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you knowwhat reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, likeme, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are otheroptions. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot,slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on firewith the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical onenessof all things deep down.

但是大多数时候，假如你足够清醒给自己一个机会，你可以选择试着用另外一种眼光重新审视一下这位肥胖的、眼睛无神的、画了浓妆、对着自己小孩大喊大叫排在收银队伍中的这位妇女。也许她平常不是这样。也许她连续三个晚上陪在罹患骨癌的丈夫病床旁边，紧紧的握着他的手。也许这个女士是汽车销售处拿着低薪的店员，昨天你的妻子还靠着她的官腔解决了一个令人恐怖、手续繁缛的让人大怒的问题。当然，这些都没有相似之处，但是也不见得不可能。这仅仅取决于你怎么考虑。假如你很自然的认为就是这么滴，并且你天生就会这么想，那么你就像我一样，大概不会考虑这些可能性一点都不神奇或者让人厌烦。但是如果你真的学会了怎么去关心，那么你会发现其实还有其他的选择。这其实也会增强你的能力让你体验一个拥挤、闷热、缓慢、极度消费的境况，并且这不光光有意义，而且神圣，就如同创造星星的力量一样让你全身火热：博爱、友谊、所有事物最深层次的神秘根源（oneness，统一性，意译了一下好接下文）(学习了！)。

Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’scapital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it.

This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to bewell-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t.You get to decide what to worship.

这神秘的根源并不一定是真实的。唯一真实的东西是，你会决定你自己怎么去尝试看到它。因此我主张，这才是真正学习如何良好地适应环境所带来的自由。你自己有意识地决定哪些东西有意义而哪些没有。你自己决定信仰什么。

Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to day of adultlife, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as notworshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. Andthe compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-typething to worship ? be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess,or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles ? isthat pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worshipmoney and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you willnever have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship yourbody and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when timeand age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieveyou. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths,proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. Thewhole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

因为这还有其他古怪但是真实的东西：在日复一日成年人生活的“战壕”中，并没有所谓的美学。没有所谓的不信仰。每个人都有自己的信仰。唯一可以选择的是信仰什么。也许，选择某些类似上帝或者精神上的事物来信仰的有说服力的原因是??无论你选择JC（耶稣）还是Allah（阿拉真主）,或者我打赌它是YHWH（以色列某个时代的上帝）或威卡教的圣母，或者说是四圣谛，或者其他的不可违背的道德准则??如果你选择其他的东西来信仰的话你会被吞掉。如果你信仰金钱或者具体的事物，如果你真的把你的信仰放在那上面的话，那么你永远不会有足够的钱或其他东西，你永远不会觉得满足。这就是事实。（如果）信仰你的身体，你的美貌，你的性吸引力，你永远都会觉得你很丑。而且，当时光和岁月开始展示力量时，在哀悼（失去他们）之前你就已经死了一百万次。在某个层面上，我们都知道了这些道理。这些道理已经被编纂成神话故事，谚语，陈词滥调，警句，寓言了；这已经成为了每个美好故事的骨架。因此总的秘诀是把事实摆在日常觉悟之上。

哇晒！鼓掌鼓掌

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need evermore power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect,being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on theverge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worshipis not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They aredefault settings.

崇拜权力，最终会让你感到无力和恐惧，你将需要更多凌驾于他人的权力来麻醉自己的恐惧。

自视聪明，并让自己看上去很聪明，你最终将感到自己的愚蠢，谎言最终总会被识破。可是这些崇拜的隐患并非因为他们是邪恶或者有罪，他们只是无意识的，来自于惯性。

They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day,getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure valuewithout ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing.

你将逐渐陷入这样的崇拜之中，日复一日，越来越有选择的去看和判断价值，而无视你所做的事情。

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on yourdefault settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and powerhums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving andworship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in waysthat have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. Thefreedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centerof all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of coursethere are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most preciousyou will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wantingand achieving and [unintelligible ? sounds like “displayal”]. The reallyimportant kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, andbeing able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over andover in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

这所谓的真实的世界，并不阻碍你惯性思维去处事。因为所谓的真实世界中的人、金钱和权力都源自一种来自自己的恐惧、愤怒、沮丧、渴望和崇拜。我们当今的文化把这些力量演变成了过度的财富、舒适和个人自由。这些自由成为了我们这个不大的国家的主人，成为了一切创造的唯一核心。当然他们有很多理由可以称道，不过，也还有其他一些类型的自由，而这些，是之前你很少听到过的，外界世界需要、实现并(听上去不太合理)展现它们。这真正重要的自由包括了关注、认识和自律，每天，会真正去关心他人，在无数的琐碎、无趣的事情上贡献出自己的力量

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think.The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, theconstant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

这是真正的自由。这是受过教育，并且明白怎样去思考。反面即无意识，惯性思维，你死我活的竞争，对得到和失去永恒的痛苦，这些无限的事情。

I know that this stuff probably doesn’t sound fun and breezy or grandlyinspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is,as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetoricalniceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever youwish. But please don’t just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr. Laurasermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or bigfancy questions of life after death.

我知道，可能这些听上去并不有趣、令人愉快，也没有一个毕业演讲该有的那样启迪心灵。就我看，它只关于大写的T，即实在，而去掉了一大堆华丽的词藻。当然，你怎样想是你的自由。但是，请不要无视它，仅仅晃晃手指(Dr. Laura sermon?)。这些跟美德、信仰、信条或者死后的任何重大问题都无关。

The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.

大写的T，即实在，关乎的是生前的事。

It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to dowith knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of whatis so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time,that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

关于的是真正的教育中真正的价值，几乎跟知识毫无关系，仅仅是简单的常识，明白什么是真实的和必要的，他们无形的隐藏在我们周围，无时无刻。我们需要做的，就是不断的提醒自己，

“This is water.”

“This is water.”

这是水这是水

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adultworld day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to betrue: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.

想保持清醒，在成人的世界中日日夜夜的生活会有超乎想象的艰难。这意味着，另外一句老话也是对的：教育实际上是一辈子的事，它始于当下。

I wish you way more than luck.

祝福你们，不止是好运