Worldview Distorted, Mission Accomplished
Me: What’s on your mind?
Nathan: Your link to that David Foster Wallace speech.
Nathan: Stop posting things that mess with my worldview!
I assume here that Patrick is referring to DFW’s Keynon College commencement address. I highly recommend reading it, especially if you’re new to his work — it was a nice toe-in-the-water when I read it. Here’s my favorite bit, from nearish to the end:
But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.
The speech was also published (posthumously) in book form.1
-
Unknown to me if this is in accordance with his wishes, so grain-of-salt and all that. ↩
