Through being open with you, you have been open to me. Not only have you sent me love, support, but also, your stories. I’ve been the receiver of so much knowledge. It allows me to be in my favorite role, student.
One bit of knowledge was mentioned in passing, a reference, but I was listening. A commencement speech was referenced that I did not know. I immediately looked it up.
His name is David Foster Wallace. He is an educator. He is a teacher.
This speech, known as, “It’s water,” is beyond complex in its simplicity. It hurts the brain in its breakdown of the every day and has REAL advice. It’s not sexy advice, but it is real advice. The secret that life will be full of the mundane, but it is how you see the mundane that will make or break you.
You may need to listen to it twice. I plan on listening threefold.
It is now my favorite. It is number 1. This is a big statement.
It explains why I decided to become a teacher. “To allow you to decide. You to wonder. You to create your own reality built on your evidence, your own truth.”
Unfortunately, there are no visuals. For many of you, this will be reason enough to press pause and move on, move on to things that are moving all around you. That is just the way we are wired. Don’t judge it.
Isn’t crazy to think that learning at one point was just stories?
There were no videos, smartboards, no whiteboards, and no chalkboards, at one point there was no written word. It was just stories. That’s how people learned. So challenge yourself. Listen to the whole thing. You are wired somewhere in there to do it. Somewhere deep in there. Do it in chunks if you need to. I needed to.
AND, ZERO judgments if you can’t watch it at all. But, at least know that when it is your time to listen to this video, it will be here right HERE.
I have zero to add to this video. I will only add about its speaker.
It saddens me to learn that David took his life.
He hung himself. If you watched the video, you will understand that the method has meaning. He did not shoot himself in the head.
He hung himself. Not sure what to make of that. What does that signify, choosing this method?
It saddens me that he understood so much truth and decided that the truth was not worth seeing anymore. That life wasn’t worth living anymore.
Maybe he needed a “Friends of David Foster Wallace.”
Comments