This season marks twenty years since David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water” address was given at Kenyon College.

The talk starts with a parable where an old fish swims by two young fish and greets them by asking, “How’s the water?” One of the young fish turns to the other and says, “What the heck is water?”

In the following essay, Wallace defines the water. He concludes:

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 hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

“This is water.”

“This is water.”

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out.

Friends, I re-read this essay each year at about this time, because it is somehow always newly and sharply illuminating – often painfully so.

Dear ones, it is so hard to see the water in which we swim.

May we be aware. 

May we be alive.

The terrific Farnam Street site offers links to both the audio and full text of This is Water, and here is the book link to a beautiful small volume of the speech. 

Image: detail from Frederic William Burton’s “Hellelil and Hildebrand,” on view just a few hours each week to protect its fragile beauty.