Thursday, June 18, 2009

This is water

As we noted at the beginning of this blog, the whole point is to remind you (and ourselves) that nothing matters, so go ahead and enjoy life! This is, however, easier said than done. Indeed, the novelist David Foster Wallace gave a famous commencement speech at Kenyon College in which he told the following parable:

"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?'"

The point, of course, is that we are all the young fish, constantly swimming around without the slightest inkling of what really surrounds us. Wallace concluded the speech by saying:

"The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness -- awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, 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, day in and day out." (Emphasis added.)

Wallace, as you may know, hung himself last year at the age of 46, a testament to just how difficult it is to remember this incredibly simple fact. However, there are exceptions to the rule. Eastern religions such as Buddhism, for example, have been preaching the non-existence of the self (and defining nirvana as the extinguishment of all desire) for millenia. In the West, where the absurd is still a relatively fringe concept, we have a more difficult slog.

Indeed, we recently read a fascinating column by Tim Kreider, in which he recounts a near-death experience (he was stabbed in the neck) and subsequent epiphany. "After my unsuccessful murder," he says, "I wasn’t unhappy for an entire year." Unfortunately, the euphoria didn't last, and "the same dumb everyday anxieties and frustrations began creeping back. I’d be disgusted to catch myself yelling in traffic, pounding on my computer, lying awake at night wondering what was going to become of me."

Interestingly, Kreider says the experience not only did not give him a permanent sense of contentment, but may have actually exacerbated negative tendencies. "If anything," he says, "it only reinforced the illusion that in the story of my life only supporting characters would die, while I, its protagonist and first-person narrator, would survive."

This is powerful--and somewhat distressing--stuff. In short, Kreider seems to be arguing that while his brush with mortality gave him short-term perspective, it may have made him less aware in the long run. (We don't buy this, by the way--no one who is not aware could have written that column.)

The takeaway, of course, is don't lose sight of the prize--keep reminding yourself "this is water," over, and over, and over again. The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, for example, recommends placing something next to your bed to remind yourself to smile each morning as soon as you open your eyes, and to give yourself constant reminders about what you are doing at any given moment (I am taking a shower, I am washing the dishes, etc.) We could not agree more--if you truly live in each moment, worry and regret have a way of simply slipping away.

Finally, we feel compelled to reproduce Kreider's concluding paragraph--a wonderfully eloquent and moving description of the absurd:

"It’s like the revelation I had when I was a kid the first time I ever flew in an airplane: when you break through the cloud cover you realize that above the passing squalls and doldrums there is a realm of eternal sunlight, so keen and brilliant you have to squint against it, a vision to hold onto and take back with you when you descend once more beneath the clouds, under the oppressive, petty jurisdiction of the local weather."

This is water. This is water. This is water.

10 comments:

  1. Very well written. Even though life is difficult, it's worth remembering in each moment..this is water.

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  2. I love this: "give yourself constant reminders about what you are doing at any given moment (I am taking a shower, I am washing the dishes, etc.) We could not agree more--if you truly live in each moment, worry and regret have a way of simply slipping away."

    This is what the concept of being fully present or "Mindfulness" is all about. THIS IS THE KEY TO LIFE: negate psychological time and live in the NOW. Almost like the concept of choiceness awareness that Krishnamurti so often talked about.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness

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  3. I clicked on this link from a comment on the Nytimes. Really lifted me up, but this concept of mindfulness isn't something I'm not aware of. Its just as you correctly state its really really hard reminding yourself that you're in water. Another quote which I'd like to add but isn't from a ''traditional'' spiritual leader (The Tortoise from Kung Fu Panda) is ''Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That's why its called the present''

    E.S. from Qatar

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  4. Rick,
    I also came to your blog from the comment at the New York Times article about HH the Dalai Lama. And after reading this first post, I immediately clicked to become a follower. And I hope this inspires me to get back to adding to my own blog. Great post.
    Thanks
    It's completely different, but you might enjoy my piece today at the Huffington Post:
    huffingtonpost.com/don-parker/

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  5. ...also clicked on this from the NYtimes article.

    Your opinions and thoughts definitely appeal to me. The only thing I jest at (since I am an Earth scientist) is that without the weather we would probably not exist...at least..not in the form that we're in now.

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  6. Don-

    Thanks for the comment - we enjoyed your satirical look at marijuana laws. We are continually amazed at the desire humans have to control the actions of others - it speaks, we believe, to our overriding fear of death, which causes us to seek control of anything and everything in a desperate (and ultimately futile) attempt to transcend the physical world.

    Paradoxically (as discussed in our recent post The Ultimate Answer Key), such actions actually push us further from the pure liberation that results from accepting (and embracing) the fleeting and meaningless nature of existence.

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  7. "We are continually amazed at the desire humans have to control the actions of others - it speaks, we believe, to our overriding fear of death, which causes us to seek control of anything and everything in a desperate (and ultimately futile) attempt to transcend the physical world."

    Precisely.

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  8. I don't quite agree that "nothing matters" in all contexts. It depends on the perspective from which the question of whether anything matters is evaluated. If it is the perspective of objective reality then I agree since the universe essentially just is and action-reaction just happens and so human beings also just are, a part of this whole process of causality.

    But from the perspective of the human individual many things matter because that is the nature of what this "object" we call a human being. A human being is capable of sensing, emoting and thinking intelligently and rationally. These capacities combined form the capacity of assigning values to the surrounding objects which consist of meaning. We differ from each other in how we assign value to things, and what matters to each of us individually, but that's just a part of what makes each human being unique compared to others and what makes the human species as a whole so adaptible and therefore evolutionaly successful.

    This might perhaps reach the same conclusion only from a slightly different angle though. Realizing that objectively nothing matters, but subjectively you have every right to assign any meaning you wish to things that you experience and let other people do the same gives a kind of sense of harmony and liberation because you've just made piece between meaningless and meaningfulness in a way that makes sense.

    If you ever get into a tough moment where your values and meanings are confused, then it is perhaps worth reminding yourself that objective reality is devoid of meaning, sort of like grounding yourself at the default position, a clean slate and the beauty of the universe that just is and which wont judge you if you don't know where you're going right now. It's like taking a break to just bread in from that awesomly meaningless universe, so you can make the next moment meaningful to you.

    Anyway, I got carried away. Hopefully nobody minds. :)

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  9. I usually don't click on links in peoples comments.. but I'm glad I did on this one. Well done. I'll be back.

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