This is Water

“[T]he really significant education in thinking that we’re supposed to get in a place like this isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about.”

Wallace introduces the importance of awareness and contextual thought processing. Metacognition, thinking about thinking, creates distance from one’s “default mode.” Wallace emphasizes the importance of critical perception over the accumulation of knowledge. He admits that over-intellectualization can become a burden, that it can cause a negative feedback loop that imprisons the mind.

“[N]owhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy’s interpretation is true and the other guy’s is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person’s most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired.”

Although tolerance and diversity are the status quo, Wallace argues that questioning one another’s fundamental values leads to growth. He uses the religious man versus the atheist parable to exemplify two diametrically opposed beliefs that are wrong in the same way. Treating fundamental values as deterministic leaves no room for change; therefore, people must investigate themselves and each other.

“[B]lind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn’t even know he’s locked up.”

Narrow views can feel comfortable and safe. Wallace confesses that even he falls victim to entrenched mindsets. People who operate on self-righteous conviction may be rewarded for their behavior, as the material world is indifferent to spiritual happiness. However, there are limits to the bounties of power, money, and professional success. Wallace stresses that inner reflection will fill the emptiness that materialism cannot.

“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.”

Self-effacement and confession are combined to convey honesty and relatability. Wallace steps back from his authority as speaker to illustrate his flaws. By scrutinizing his own shortcomings, he levels with the audience and makes his message more appealing. The technique presents Wallace as an example to learn from and lessens the power imbalance in the speaker-audience dynamic.

“It’s a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.”

Free will and determinism are constantly at war in Wallace’s philosophy. Those people who do not exercise agency and self-investigation will inevitably fall into automatic habits. Awareness brings choice into the formula. Individuals can choose how they want to contextualize situations and thus foster empathy for others.

“People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being ‘well-adjusted,’ which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.”

Wallace sees connections between the mind and machines, especially since American culture is ensconced in mass-media consumerism. He introduces phrases like “natural default setting” and “well-adjusted” to highlight the options individuals have when thinking. People can fall back on narrow, instinctual, and self-centered base-level behaviors, but this default mode can be overcome with vigilance and hard work. A well-adjusted person fights against their fundamental egoism to foster empathy and compassion.

“Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.”

This adage evokes the theme of mindfulness. Whether based in spirituality or cognitive science, mindfulness can quiet the intellect. Wallace gives ample examples of cognitive noise—a bad day, a traffic jam, an unpleasant supermarket—that can be internalized, breeding negativity. Choosing when and how to react to reflexive impulses makes the mind a tool rather than an overseer.

“There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration.”

Wallace presumes the graduates have sampled monotonous adult regimens but not yet lived them. He points out that speakers often offer grand exhortations in lieu of concrete realities, but he does not peddle illusions. The students will face repetitive, disheartening struggles. Developing meaning will become vital to their progress as functional beings.

“I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket’s checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.” 

Compassion and empathy tie in to Wallace’s cures for the “default mode.” A perspectivist view neutralizes the certainty of entrenched beliefs. Considering others’ plights provides insight into one’s own troubles and can be humbling. Distancing oneself from egocentric impulses helps stave off negativity. Avoiding dismissive assumptions can cultivate kinship with others.

“But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.”

One of Buddhism’s core tenets establishes the impermanence of reality. Liberation from suffering is sought through transcending self and desire. Wallace’s spiritual throughline shares this ideal with Buddhism. He endorses a feeling of oneness with fellow men and women that helps free a person from their selfish struggles. Life is an endless cycle of death and rebirth; escape from this cycle is found through the “middle way,” which advocates for temperance, awakening, and awareness.

“Everybody worships.”

Wittgenstein famously viewed everything from a religious perspective. Similarly, Nietzsche’s perspectivism investigates any assertion as biographical, as a contextually based belief system. “This Is Water” invokes a similar notion toward meaning. Wallace insists that the graduates choose a calling worth their devotion. People often devote themselves to materials, money, or power, but those things rarely last. Wallace asserts that you cannot choose whether you worship, but you have some say in what you worship and how.

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.”

Wallace presents three foundational statutes of mindfulness and the “middle way”: attention, awareness, and discipline. Transcendence is achieved by looking away from the ego, becoming conscious of others, and reigning in self-centered impulses. All this denotes sacrifice—not the romanticized heroic form touted in popular culture, but the kind of everyday sacrifice that often goes unnoticed.

“The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.” 

What individuals choose to do in this life matters. Suffering needlessly, making situations worse, pursuing selfish gains—all actions color one’s outlook. Additionally, people can lose sight of life by always looking forward to a promised afterworld. Wallace exhorts his audience to embrace the here and now. He urges them to find meaning, to continually battle against nihilism or determinism because, like the atheism versus religion parable, they are two sides of the same coin.