How a short speech by David Foster Wallace can help you through a bad day

At Kenyon College in 2005 American author David Foster Wallace gave a commencement speech later published as an essay titled, "This is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, About Living a Compassionate Life."

You can read the essay yourself but it's better to hear it in his voice. It is available both to watch on YouTube and as an audiobook. I recommend the audiobook as you can listen while out on a walk, free of distractions and screens.

In many ways it is an unusual speech. Graduation ceremonies are a time for celebration and praise, but Wallace spends much of his time explaining the daily drudgery that lies in wait for these wide-eyed graduates. They will get up, shower, eat breakfast, sit in traffic, go to work, sit in more traffic, go to the supermarket, cook, eat, clean and sleep. Again and again and again. If they don’t learn how to deal with the myriad banalities of modern life it will destroy them. How do we deal with it?

This is quite difficult to do, as it involves facing a painful truth: all those annoyances and irritants are not getting in the way of life, they are life

He starts with a story:

What one change would you like to see in the Irish health system?

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One Small Change: A daily phone-in hour for GPs to contact hospital consultants

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Augmented reality toy can put a dinosaur or mermaid in your home

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‘My wife and I are separating. What can we do to help our young children cope?’

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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 step one; acknowledging the water for what it is. This is quite difficult to do, as it involves facing a painful truth: all those annoyances and irritants such as traffic, switching insurance companies, pop-up ads, and trips to the dentist are not getting in the way of life, they are life. We might sometimes forget but we have a choice in how we react to these things.

By way of example he talks about giving people the benefit of the doubt. It might feel natural to react angrily if someone dangerously cuts you off on the motorway but what if that driver is a father rushing his son to the hospital? It might also feel natural to get offended if someone is rude to you but what if that person is dealing with such intense grief they hardly noticed you at all?

Now you might find these scenarios implausible and it’s possible they are. But if you apply this idea to your life you’ll quickly see that it’s not about pretending every bad person has a noble and virtuous private life; it’s about choosing how to react. It’s about removing yourself from the centre of the universe. It can be a very difficult, helpful and healthy exercise.

Life as a stay-at-home parent is a very up-and-down affair. The ups are glorious, but it can be incredibly difficult; the days long and often lonely

When I first heard this speech as a young man I took it seriously and literally. I tried my best to give people the benefit of the doubt. I tried to remove myself from the centre of the universe. If someone was rude I tried to assume I caught them on a bad day. This was, and continues to be, quite difficult. It is hard to look at a pig-parker taking up two spaces in their new Range Rover and think, “They probably don’t usually do that.”

Recently I revisited the speech and found it has another unexpected application. Life as a stay-at-home parent is a very up-and-down affair. The ups are glorious, but it can be incredibly difficult; the days long and often lonely. When I listened to Wallace’s speech again, I found a lot to take comfort from not just in how to think about the world but how to raise my kids. The things he talks about like empathy, compassion and patience align uncannily with how I want to be as a parent. He’s talking about gentle parenting without even knowing it. Just like we have a choice in how we react to a car cutting us off on the motorway, we have a choice in how we react to a child having an absolute meltdown at the worst possible moment.

There's a reason Gustav Klimt paints a kiss, or Joni Mitchell sings about a Christmas tree, or Terrence Malick lets the camera linger on a branch swaying in the breeze: it's all water. But like the fish in the story we often fail to see it.

If you need a mantra to get you through a difficult day, I can’t think of a better one. Say it as many times as you need to: this is water.