This is Water...This is Life

In this passage, David Foster Wallace expresses his view on what the meaning of life really is, He starts out with some humor to show a concrete example: he explains that there are two fish in a bowl and one fish asked the other fish what water is, This is ironic because the fish has been swimming in water for his entire life, yet he is still confused about what water actually is. Here, this example serves as a metaphor for how we see life. Despite the fact that we have been living life for a long time, few of us actually know what the meaning of life is. Instead of directly explaining what the meaning of life is, he alludes to a more familiar example in which most people can relate to.

Wallace emphasizes the fact that people are usually locked into a mindset that just has everything on repeat. People just blindly repeat their schedule without further thought for anything or anyone. They are mostly worried about how to make it through their day with all of the problems they are facing. Most if us are deeply self-centered to the extent we don't bother to acknowledge what others are going through because we are so caught up in our own lives. Wallace says that we are "hard-wired" and metaphorically implies that we are programmed like machines to follow the same repeat cycle.

What most of us don't realize is that people around us are often in the same boat as us. They are also
struggling to make it through the day. Wallace illustrates a scene at the grocery store in which everyone
was in the same boat as him and went grocery shopping just before the store's closing time because
they didn't have any other time to go. Everyone in the store, including the cashiers were tired and
annoyed after their busy day. 

If we are so locked and confined in our busy schedules, do we have freedom? If not, what is
real freedom? Wallace defines real freedom as "attention, awareness, discipline, effort and being
able to truly care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, every day" (Wallace 237).
When people forget about their locked-in daily schedule, they achieve freedom. When they forget their
troubles and care about other people, they are freed from their struggles and given a chance to
empathize with other people. Acknowledging the people and the world around us frees us from
the tiny microcosm we live in and gives us a glimpse of the world. This frees us from the locked
mindset and routine we live in.

Wallace repeats the line, “this is water” at the end of the speech to come full-circle
and to tie it back to the anecdote in the beginning. It leaves a take-home message
for the readers to think about and decide whether to change their perspective.