This Is Water
In 2005, David Foster Wallace opened his commencement speech at Kenyon College with a parable about two young fish. While swimming, the pair encounters an older fish going in the other direction. He nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” The two young fish continue swimming, and eventually one of them looks at the other and asks, “What the hell is water?” Failing to notice the “truths hidden in plain sight,” Wallace explains, is like what water is to fish: when confronted with the mundane and frustrating aspects of life, we possess the total freedom to choose how to think and respond. “The point is,” Wallace says, while mundane and frustrating things like a boring job, crowds, cranky kids, long checkout lines, bad traffic, or rude people are inevitable, it’s exactly in those moments “where the work of choosing is going to come in.” You can consider that everyone else in the checkout line is in a similar state of boredom and frustration, and that some of them might actually have harder, more painful lives than you do. Or that the rude, dull-faced cashier—a single mother who has been working non-stop for the past six hours—is struggling to pay the bills and provide for her family. Or that the driver who cut you off could be rushing to the hospital because his child is sick or injured, and it’s YOU who is in HIS way. “Because,” Wallace says, “if I don’t make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I’m going to be pissed and miserable every time.” Learning how to be a parent, an athlete, a filmmaker, or simply a good person is essentially “learning how to think.” It means maintaining the “simple 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… This is water.”
Taking responsibility for the mundane and frustrating aspects of life by reminding yourself: This is water… This is water… This is water—that’s the idea for today.
Every Single Thing I learned Has Paid Off
Before he became one of the great filmmakers of our time, James Cameron [Terminator, Titanic, Avatar] spent nearly ten years working blue-collar jobs—truck driver, school bus mechanic, precision tool-and-die machinist, and high school janitor. In his spare time, he painted and drew futuristic sci-fi scenes inspired by his dreams. “I was frustrated because I just kind of didn’t know what I was here for,” he said, “If I have all these ideas and all these paintings that I’m constantly doing, why am I doing all this when all I can seem to do is get a job in one of these very mundane things?” Rather than resigning himself to the possibility that this blue-collar life would last forever, Cameron took responsibility for his future. On weekends, he went to the University of Southern California library, reading books on filmmaking and giving himself, as he described it, “a full graduate course on film technology.” In 1979, Cameron landed his first job in the film industry as a crew member for the “B-movie king,” Roger Corman. On the set of Galaxy of Terror, there was a scene involving a severed arm on the floor covered in maggots. But the maggots weren’t wiggling ecstatically enough. Drawing on something he had read, Cameron explained, “I took a piece of electrical cord, put it underneath the arm, and buried it so you couldn’t see it. Then I had a guy behind the set who plugged in the electrical cord when I said, ‘Action.’ I go, ‘Roll camera, and, Action!’ All these worms come to life and start wiggling around, and then I yell, ‘Cut!’ The guy behind the set unplugs the cord, and the worms stop moving.” Cameron’s inventive, low-cost techniques caught Corman’s attention, and he quickly became a favourite—paving the way for more ambitious projects. Looking back on those years of mundane and frustrating jobs, Cameron said, “Every single thing that I learned at that time has paid off for me—how to drive a truck, how to be a machinist, even being a high school janitor and scraping gum off the bottom of the desks. Even that was something I value now. It was something I needed to go through.”
Intervene By Remediating Yourself
Referencing the famous study of fixed versus growth mindsets by Carol S. Dweck, the main difference, psychologist Dr David Yeager says, is people with fixed mindsets think “they are they way they are.” The goal is to “defend your ego, to hide your characteristics.” But in a growth mindset, “the goal is remediation: to improve, to get better.” “That’s a totally different narrative,” Yeager says, and it matters because “the way you interpret the meaning of something determines how you respond to it.” All of us have prior beliefs about how the world works: If you look at a person who’s giving you a condescending and mean look, he is a condescending and mean person. If you think your kid is a tantrum-throwing ingrate who is more of a hassle than a joy, he is a tantrum-throwing ingrate who is more of a hassle than a joy. But if you feel anger, anxiety or fear rising inside you, Yeager says, you must “reframe these stresses and combine them with a growth mindset.” What psychologists call “Lay Theory Intervention,” you intervene in the moment by telling yourself a different story so you can respond differently.
No, Uh-Uh, I Don’t Want To Hear It
In the first two seasons of his NBA career, 17-year-old Kobe Bryant wasn’t playing much basketball. He averaged just 15 of the 48 minutes per game, coming off the bench and getting very little time on the court. Friends and family would say to him, Oh, you should be starting. Oh, you should be playing more. Oh, your coaches don’t know what they’re doing. But when the mundane and frustrating aspects of sports start to fill your head, Kobe said, you have to tell yourself a different story. “It’s a lot of outside noise,” he said, “from friends and former coaches and all this stuff filling your head with nonsense.” The right response, he said, is “No, uh-uh, I don’t want to hear it. This is on me. If I’m not playing, I need to get better at this. I need to get better at that. These things I can control, and this is what I’m gonna do.” So what did he decide? “I have to be twice as good,” Kobe said. “I have to be undeniable… so good you have to play me.” By his third season with the Lakers, his steady improvement and undeniable talent made him a fan favourite, and at just 19 years old, he became a permanent starter and was voted into the 1998 NBA All-Star Game.
In The Calm Light Of Mild Philosophy
“History,” author Ryan Holiday writes, “overwhelmingly disproves the idea that self-composure is a synonym for resignation.” All major figures of the 19th and 20th centuries—Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi—looked at everything, as George Washington once said, “in the calm light of mild philosophy.” “They were involved in public life,” Holiday writes, “they were involved in important causes, they lived in a scary world where outrageous things happened on a daily basis. And it is precisely for this reason that the [Greek philosophers] cultivated poise and restraint and self-command. Because the outrages and injustices of their time demanded it. Not apathy, but the ability to step back and be objective, to be strategic, to be diplomatic, to not despair or scream or alienate.” People have done it in the past. People are doing it today. And people—you and I—have the same freedom, to look at our circumstances and say, Hold on. Wait a minute. This is on me. This is my responsibility. Whether you’re a parent, an athlete, a filmmaker, or simply an ordinary person pushing through the mundane and frustrating aspects of life, we have the agency to notice the truths hidden in plain sight all around us, to keep reminding ourselves: This is water… This is water… This is water.
