Last week, I read a recent book on Lutheran ethics by my colleague, Craig Nessan: Free in Deed. The book is good–and definitely worth a read–and in the course of reading that book, I was pointed to another: This is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life, by David Foster Wallace. [Craig referenced it–the book is actually the commencement speech Wallace delivered at Kenyon College in 2005.]
It is very short, and I really enjoyed it–and I have continued to think about his overarching point, and some of the other things says in service to that point, too. The point, by the way, is this: the “liberal arts mantra of ‘teaching me how think’ is really supposed to mean: to be just a little less arrogant, to have some ‘critical awareness’ about myself and my certainties…because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of it, is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded” [33].
In the subtitle, Wallace talks about “living a compassionate life,” which is interesting, because in the speech itself, he doesn’t mention “compassion” at all. But what he does talk a lot about is what I would call “anti-compassion”—the attitude of going through your life unconsciously and relentlessly centering yourself and your own experiences, without even realizing it.
He starts with the story of three fish exchanging a greeting–I’m sure you’ve heard it. Here is how Wallace tells it: Old fish says to two young fish, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” The two fish swim on and one turns to the other and says, “What the hell is water?”
The point of this story story is straightforward: “…the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about” [8]. Wallace acknowledges that this might be seen as simply a “banal platitude,” but, “in the day-to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life-or-death importance” [9]. Here’s what he means.
First, over and over again, day in and day out, we have to “exercise some control over how and what you think”–that is, “being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience” [54]. Because we all center ourselves so thoroughly and unconsciously, we normally go through life assuming that the way we see other people, the way we judge their actions, the way we interpret a situation is the right way, and all of our feelings/assessments/evaluations are objectively correct. Contrary to Wallace’s advice, we are not “choosing” how we construct meaning from experience–nor are we choosing how to direct our attention. We are just living unconsciously with ourselves at the center of the universe.
He gives a long example of having to go to the grocery store after work, and experiencing the whole thing as a nightmare: tedious, frustrating, and filled with annoying, stupid people–in their cars, in the aisles, in the checkout lane. We all have had this experience. But, Wallace says, “if you have learned to pay attention, then you will know that you have other options. It will actually be in 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 lit the starts–compassion, love, the subsurface unity of all things” [93]. This, he says, is real freedom: “Consciously deciding what has meaning and what doesn’t” [95]. He goes on to say:
“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day” [120].
I love that, especially when he contrasts it with what the world wants us to believe freedom really is: “The freedom to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation” [117].
He tells another story, which you probably also have heard in one form or another. An atheist and a believer are having a conversation in a bar in the Alaskan wilderness, and the atheist says something like, Oh, I’ve tried believing in God and praying, but it doesn’t work. “Just last month I was caught in a blizzard and I prayed to God to save me, and all that happened was that a couple Eskimos [I would have used a less-offensive word] just happened to come wandering by, and they showed me the way back to the camp” [23]. Careful, Wallace says, of being “so totally, obnoxiously confident” in our own interpretation of a situation. This certainty, this close-minded arrogance is “like an imprisonment so complete that the prisoner doesn’t even know he’s locked up” [32].
Too much of the time, even most of the time, we don’t see the bars on our cell. We don’t see the water.
So, if you want to live a compassionate life, pay attention; imagine other people are experiencing a situation differently from you, and that they aren’t necessarily wrong. Don’t just motor through life on your brain’s “default settings.” Make conscious choices. Everybody worships, so worship what matters–something that won’t ultimately eat you alive [like money or possessions or beauty or power].
In other words, “live consciously, adultly, day in and day out” [135].
And keep open the possibility that “Those Eskimos might be much more than they seem” [134].
Happy Lutheran 