This Is Water Reaction

David Foster Wallace’s “This Is Water” commencement speech provides useful guidelines on how one should use a more open mentality to the frustrating, mundane events in life in order to make the most out of every moment.  Mainly using an example of getting caught in rush hour traffic and then having to wait in a long grocery store line, Wallace talks about how we go on default mode or autopilot by allowing ourselves to think that we are the center of the universe.  It certainly makes me wonder about how in a few years, I will be subject to having an average, pettily frustrating work day.  After thinking a little, I can see that I am already getting a taste of this every time I drive through rush hour or school traffic every weekday.  As I get older, I will eventually have to face the years where day after day I will get up, drive through traffic, work on the same thing over and over again, drive through traffic again, and try to sleep early to prepare for another boring, tiring day.  It is true that, similar to what Wallace stated, it is easy to get lost in the narcissistic way of thinking that everyone and everything is out to get me as I watch a car change lanes just to get ahead of me.  Wallace’s speech challenges me to think about others’ situations, such as in his example where a lady screaming at her child may have been the low-wage clerk who helped your spouse with a horrific problem at the motor vehicle store.  It gives a new light on these slow, annoying situations by stressing that we can use the time that we are forced to slow down to really think and decide on what has meaning and what does not.  I hope to be able to use the advice in his speech to make my quality of life better as I move on through the stages of life.

(Gonna start adding stuff that I make whenever it sorta fits)