60 Seconds for Motivate Your Monday: What the Hell Is Water?

<p>Hello to you listening in <a href="https://www.australias.guide/nsw/location/thornleigh/" target="_blank">Thornleigh, Australia</a>!</p><p>Coming to you from Whidbey Island, Washington this is Stories from Women Who Walk with 60 Seconds (and a bit more because it’s worth it) for Motivate Your Monday with your host, Diane Wyzga  </p><p>The following is excerpted from <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/this-is-water" target="_blank">This Is Water</a> By Jenna Krajeski, published September 19, 2008. </p><p>“<i>In 2005, David Foster Wallace addressed the graduating class at Kenyon College with a speech that is now one of his most read pieces. Click </i><a href="http://bulletin-archive.kenyon.edu/x4280.html" target="_blank"><i>HERE</i></a><i> in the Episode Notes to access the speech. </i></p><p><i>In it, he argues, gorgeously, against “unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.” He begins with a parable:</i></p><p><i>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?”</i></p><p><i>All of this is, no doubt, just the tip of the iceberg, peeking out of the sea. At Kenyon, Wallace elaborated on his water parable:</i></p><p><i>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....The fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance.</i></p><p><i>And, nearing the end of his speech:</i></p><p><i>The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death. 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 h