// September 22nd, 2008 // No Comments » // Leadership Development
“(If anybody feels like perspiring [cough], I’d advise you to go ahead, because I’m sure going to. In fact I’m gonna [mumbles while pulling up his gown and taking out a handkerchief from his pocket].) Greetings parents and congratulations to Kenyon’s graduating class of 2005… There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story thing turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you’re worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don’t be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning.” 1
Three years and four months ago David Foster Wallace, one of the most important American authors of the last twenty years, stepped aside from his writing sabbatical to share reflections on the “capital-T” truths for living. A rare, intellectual and enquiring perspective “it was Wallace’s odd sense of double vision that most defined his sensibility. He was a humanist who could not help but see both sides of the story, who imagined himself into the gray middle areas of his writing.” 2
Ten days ago, this man who seemed so uncomfortable being cast as the troubled genius, lost touch with one side of the story, and hung himself. He had suffered from depression throughout his life and it had intensified deeply in recent months. In this light, the commencement address is even more honest, beautiful and true. It seems not so much spoken for the graduands, as it is a final attempt for this rational mind to teach his emotional self a lesson it refused to hear.
In a quiet time read the whole thing, or if it is you are so inclined, speak it out and be a vehicle for these words who have lost their source. Maybe we can hear the voice that he could not.
A wonderful interview below, featuring Wallace on the Charlie Rose show in 1997, soon after he had been awarded the MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” and the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction.
1: Keyton Commencement Address, 2005.
2: David Foster Wallace: Idealist Skeptic, LA Times
