One of My Favorite Commencement Speeches: "This is Water"

Source: WSJ Illustration "This is Water"

I have a soft-spot for graduation commencement addresses -- maybe I'm needy for inspiration, or perhaps I'm always on the verge of a new existential crisis (for the record: both our true).

I've always held Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech as the epitome of graduation speeches -- easy to follow, powerful, quotable.  I've watched it over and over again even with full knowledge that he's not a perfect role model.

Today, I watched David Foster Wallace's 2005 Kenyon Commencement Speech, "This is Water," and I must say, it's excellent -- incredibly thoughtful and tries to shy away from platitudes.  It *might* be even better than Steve Jobs' commencement.

He addresses the point of education:

"It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over"

And the importance of trying to understand life from someone else's perspective:

"The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too. 

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 centre of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute centre of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real."

And, along the way, he makes you laugh and think.  It's the beauty of David Foster Wallace.

Take 20 minutes out of your day & watch the video below.