As if it wasn’t hard enough
From this past Sunday’s New York Times Book Review:
Wallace’s Gift
To the Editor:
I was one of the graduates in the audience at David Foster Wallace’s May 21, 2005, commencement address at Kenyon College, described by Tom Bissell (April 26), and I will remember the honor for the rest of my life. Wallace’s gift to the world is his brilliant novels and stories, but it also includes this address he gave to a group of nearly 400 students and their families. The speech will forever remind us what it means to have the privilege of liberal education, to be forever educated in human sentiment.
Wallace closed by saying: “It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness - awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: ‘This is water, this is water.’ It is unimaginably hard to … stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out.”
Ultimately, Wallace succumbed, but the class of 2005 continues the vision he opened our hearts to seeing. His last words to our class were: “Your education really is the job of a lifetime. And it commences now. I wish you more than luck.”
…
Well (and this is -db- talking), I wish you more than unimaginably hard, and yet knowing that goddam water, and then no messy purple wife-surprise hanging afterwards.
-db-
