This Is Water

In 2005 the author, David Foster Wallace, gave a commencement speech at Kenyon University.  He titled his speech “This is Water” and opened with the story of two fish swimming along peacefully unaware when an older fish swam by and jolted them into reality by asking, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” The fish were stunned by the question posed by their elder and wondered what was meant by water.  

This stunned reaction and discomforting confusion was also present in the fish who featured in the story told by Kramer, Kania, and Senge and described on the blog page of my website.  I’m beginning to detect a pattern – fish tend to encounter existential moments while swimming.  

Foster Wallace goes on in the speech to reflect on the bizarre ordinariness of adult life, with its tedious and sometimes alienating routines, a life that leaves its participants believing that they can be certain of the reality around them.  Instead of succumbing to this mistaken certainty, Foster Wallace urges his listeners to abandon their “default settings” for perceiving the world around them and in lieu of certainty choose awareness.  

Actively choosing awareness is relevant for people taking on a Systems Mindset .  In our journeys to become more mindful of the system of systems in which we are living, working, and developing, it's likely that our most influential teachers will come from locations in the systems that are different from the locations that we inhabit.  These influential teachers will demonstrate the robust and important knowledge that can be learned from people who have observed, lived, and made sense of things that we have not yet observed, lived, and made sense of.  They will show us that our default settings – who I know, what I know, how I know – limit our capacity for awareness and for learning.  

Foster Wallace claims that the real value of education is to shake us from our certainties and encourage our 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.’”  



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