Go outside on a clear, cloudless day and look up at the sky.
Pay attention to one thing: How blue it is. Just that, nothing else. Don't think about how far away it is, how vast it is, how beautiful it is, how cloudless it is, how poetic it is, how nice it is. Notice only its blueness. Notice how the sky is really, incredibly, almost shockingly blue. It's a pure, soft blue, a blue you want to grab and put into your pocket and make pillows out of, a blue that makes other, different blues seem not as blue somehow. Let its raw, unrelenting blueness gently wash all other thoughts from your mind. Let it take your breath away.
While you're doing that, think about how many other people have been under a cloudless sky as you are now and not done what you're doing now; not noticed the blueness right above them, that blue expanse stretching forever into the horizon, have never noticed that blueness.
It seems like a big deal to me, for some reason, that there would be even a single person who has never thought about how incredibly, awesomely blue the sky is. How many other sources of wonder and awe do these people miss on a daily basis? How many do I miss on a daily basis? The answer is probably "too many".
It's ordinary to love the beautiful. It's beautiful to love the ordinary.
It bothers me when people say "small world" in reaction to finding someone they know in a place they didn't expect, or finding out they share a friend with someone else. Like, "Hey, my cousin once sold you a hot dog! Small world!"
Fact: The world is not small. The world is, in fact, enormous. Think about the number of carpenters there are in the world. Now add that to the number of taxi drivers. Now add in all the electricians, the coffee shop employees, the alcoholics, the waiters, the lawyers, the insomniacs, the diabetics, the pilots. Realize you haven't even come close to being nearly semi halfway to being even approachinga hundredth of the way to thinking about all the people in the world.
If we actually lived in a small world, we would not say "small world" as a surprised or shocked reaction, or to mean "what a funny coincidence!". If we actually lived in a small world, encountering people we knew would be commonplace. We use the words "small world" to mean we are actually living in a huge world, a world so full of people and places it's amazing when we encounter someone we recognize. We use the words "small world" to express the opposite of what they mean.
The speech resonated with me deeply, mostly because DFW says things I've been thinking about for a while, only in a much more eloquent, funny way.
As DFW says, here is a truth: Everything about my personal experience tells me that I am the center of the Universe. While others' feelings have to be communicated to me in some way, mine are right there. My emotions are immediate and urgent; yours are far away. I can feel the full profundity of my grief and ecstasy in a way that I can't even begin to understand yours. You are the same. We both perceive the other through our own frame of reference. A guy driving a Hummer cuts me off on the road -- how dare he get in my way? Perhaps, as DFW says, "the Hummer that just cut me off is being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, 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."
There's a word, made up by the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, for the realization that every human being you see lives a life just as fulfilling, immediate, complicated, and filled with emotion as yours is: Sonder.
Feeling sonder can make you feel sad and small, but I think it's the way towards a true, genuine compassion that can transcend the most divisive boundaries. Make up stories about the people you hate. Give them all the excuses, while denying yourself those same excuses. Paint yourself as the villain, while giving them a rich, vivid life. You are only a background character. They are the hero.
DFW takes it a step farther. He says, "if you really learn how to pay attention, then... 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." I'm not sure if more optimistic words have ever been spoken. The word choice is especially beautiful. The worldview DFW presents transforms an annoying, miserable situation into a sacred one, something on fire with love and fellowship. Amazing.
So what does DFW mean when he emphasizes the importance of repeating to ourselves, "This is water"? Well, at the beginning of the speech, he gives a parable about some fish:
Two young fish swim by an older one. Older one says, "The water's nice today." Younger fish says to the other, "What the hell's water?"
Repeating "This is Water" is our continual reminder to ourselves to notice the basic, human truths right in front of us. These are truths so fundamental to being human that everyone on the planet shares them. As DFW concedes, it is unimaginably hard to remain conscious of these truths. But sometimes we can catch a glimpse of it, the capital-T Truth peeking from behind the veil, and with it, understand more completely what it means to be alive and human.
My current job (being a cashier) does not offer autonomy. Managers decide when I work, when I take my breaks, when I take my lunch, what I do when I work, if I'm doing a good job, and so on. At first, I thought that was the whole story -- people control what I do, and I'm fine with that, because there's nothing particularly difficult about it. A machine could do what I do with relative ease. Upon closer inspection, however, I realized people don't control what I do. Machines do. I undertake all interactions at my job through the conduit of the cash register. The register is everything. I use it to communicate with my managers and the customers I help. In a way, I am an extension of it -- and notably, not the other way around.
Computers write my schedule. They write my managers' schedules. They tell us when we can clock in, when we can clock out, when we can go to and return from lunch. They keep track of our inventory, how our store is doing, what we need to do as a result. They command us.
We have a self-checkout section in the store. Basically, the self-checkout registers do exactly what I do, except without me. The only thing stopping all the registers becoming self-checkout is the integrity of the customer. For some reason, this does not seem like a difficult obstacle to overcome.
At work, I perform the task of a machine, at the command of computers (other machines). But it doesn't end there. I come home and use the computer to communicate with people and to entertain myself. I rely on them utterly. If computers stopped working tomorrow, it would destroy my current lifestyle. Not just me, of course. It would ruin countless lives. It would straight up kill the millions in hospitals who depend on machines even more than I do. Most money would be gone. There would be nothing.
I'm not sure if I should be scared, or really scared.
The word "opposite" means something diametrically different from another thing. Black and white. Happiness and anger. When you are an opposite, you have something that opposes you. Something antithetical to your nature.
But opposites are more alike than we realize. Consider a list of three words: "black", "white" and "Tuesday". Notice how Tuesday obviously doesn't belong in this list. Why? "Black" and "white", despite being diametrically different, have a lot in common. They're both colors, used to describe something perceived through sensory means. They're both present on a zebra. Meanwhile, "Tuesday" has none of those things in common.
That one's pretty obvious, so consider another list: "black", "white", and "green". Now these words are all colors, so why does green feel like it's the odd one out? I submit the following reason: Opposites belong together. Opposites, in addition to being different, complement and fill one another's voids.
There is a concept in the Chinese philosophy/religion of Taoism called yin-yang. Here's the pictoral representation:
Yin is the dark, yang is the light. Notice how they complete one another. Also notice how yin is present in yang and vice versa. The idea is this: Opposites do not merely belong together; they are a part of one another. If you look closely at the nature something, you will find its opposite hidden somewhere inside.
"Black" needs "white" to exist in a way it does not need "Tuesday" to exist; in other words "White" constitutes some part of what defines "black". A Maori proverb I like says, "Turn towards the Sun and the shadows fall behind you." Take the Sun away, and the shadows disappear. Take the shadows away, and there is nothing to turn towards anymore.
In happiness, there exists some element of grief. We can not have one without the other, because to be happy all the time is to lose our ability to contextualize what thatmeans, what happiness is. Likewise, in absolute silence, there is a profound noise, a voice talking to me I call "me", and which you would also call "me" (but you would call my voice "you"). There is nothing louder.
I'm entranced by the paradox of opposites being part of one another. It adds dimension and profundity to an otherwise flat universe. If two diametrically opposed concepts can be more similar to each other than Tuesday can, there is some underlying harmony to the universe. Look for opposites in their opposites -- e.g. find war in peace, find strife in bliss, find tranquility in chaos, then do it the other way around -- and you'll see what I mean.
