Have you read David Foster Wallace’s posthumous book This is Water yet? If you haven’t, you should.
The book is beautiful and simple, and not really a book at all. The text is from the only commencement speech that Foster Wallace ever delivered, at Kenyon College in 2005. However, the book designers spaced the text out as if it were a long poem. Each page only contains, at most, 4 sentences surrounded by white space. The effect is startling, because it both speeds up your reading experience and slows it down.
His book is framed by a koan, that I’ll quote here:
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 goes, “What the hell is water?”
The message of the book is simple. We all live daily with the choice of how we react to the minutiae of our lives, of how we live in our own water. We can get frustrated with the little annoyances and live most of our time in a state of subsumed rage. On the other hand, we could choose to see things from another’s perspective (rather than the egocentric “default” perspective) and try to be compassionate with each other. We could try to notice the water and rise above it for awhile.
In writing this, I realize that it is not at all simple. Perhaps it’s deceptively simple.
Today, I had my first taste of what my job will be like once school starts. I had one of those days where I had back-to-back meetings. I had to prep for those meetings in between, to make sure that I was ready to help the students or talk somewhat intelligently with my colleagues. I responded to over 100 emails. I answered phone messages. I scanned spreadsheets, stuffed envelopes, and on and on. It was a regular day.
Throughout my day, in the little snippets of time I had in between meetings and tasks, I wondered how I could make attitude choices on days like these. I certainly was functioning on my default setting, rather than slowing down and taking the time to be a good listener. I think that being an artist or a writer should help you to be more sensitive and aware, since writing and art making requires a certain amount of awareness and sensitivity. Instead, I feel like I shut down this part of me while I work, just to make it through the day. I realize, of course, that this is every day and I should strive for more than making it through.
I’d like to ask you, those of you out there who are artists and have day jobs. Do you bring awareness and compassion into your work day? Are you successful? Do you shut off and protect that part of yourself, so that you can save it for when you need to do your art?
9to5poet
