This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

A thought-provoking essay from David Foster Wallace, adapted from his 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College, about the importance of choosing how we think, learning to see beyond ourselves, and finding meaning in the ordinary moments of everyday life.

Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. The speech is reprinted for the first time in book form in This is Water. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others. After his death, it became a treasured piece of writing reprinted in The Wall Street Journal andthe London Times, commented on endlessly in blogs, and emailed from friend to friend.

Writing with his one-of-a-kind blend of causal humor, exacting intellect, and practical philosophy, David Foster Wallace probes the challenges of daily living and offers advice that renews us with every reading. He reminds us that we have the power to choose patience, understanding, and compassion, even in the most mundane moments of life.