The very obvious sights in our lives are the ones that are the hardest to see. Something goes wrong and not per our will, we get mad. But, we always had a choice. Stuck in traffic? It is perfectly fine to be mad at people jumping lanes and blaming your dreary life for being stuck while you could be home relaxing with a cup ' coffee. It is easy and natural to think this way. But there is an alternative. Having a tiring day at work everyone wants to return home, enjoy a supper and some leisure time. You can either see the stupidity of the person squeezing in your lane or decide to help yourself with a thought that maybe someone close to them is unwell and needs their immediate attention. It takes the same amount of effort to choose either thought, but the latter will help you more with enjoying the supper. Life should work the way we want it to. It does! if I plan on being happy, it's under my control perceive my surroundings positively. This is basically a sermon about how to live a mundane, routine existence filled with all those annoying little encounters we have every day: SUV's that cut us off, long lines in grocery stores, etc. Wallace points out that our default setting is to focus exclusively on ourselves, on our own needs, as if we are the center of the universe and everyone else is simply in our way. In such a mode, these everyday encounters will increasingly irritate us to the point where we become miserable. Instead of just falling into this automatic self-centered and ultimately self-defeating perspective, Wallace challenges us to choose different thoughts: consider what other people are going through, why they are acting the way they are, what pain and misfortune has befallen them. By doing so, we can release ourselves from the prison of our own self-centered consciousness. A simple message, but incredibly powerful when spoken in Wallace's eloquent voice. It saddens me that this bright light of literature and humanity left us far too soon.
What do You think about Esto Es Agua (2009)?
This is water. A most beautiful fucking meditation.
—Sarah
