I once again read David Foster Wallace’s This Is Water on the first day of the year. I don’t think it particularly matters that this is the first book I decided to read this year, but one book had to be first.
The essay is a simple one. Its simplicity perhaps deceptive, in the way that the obvious can be both profound and deeply important.
The default-mode, the unquestioning, not-even-choosing, the insisting to already know, that ego-centered perspective only, the snap-judgment, Kahneman-style System 1 thinking (fast and intuitive – and often wrong or at least incomplete), it is setting you up, with obviousness:
[…] arrogance, blind certainty, a closed-mindedness that’s like an imprisonment so complete that the prisoner doesn’t even know he’s locked up.
David Foster Wallace, This Is Water, page 32.
He points toward our default and warns us to notice and become aware, not just at times of clear importance, but especially during the everyday and the mundane.
The person who asserts themselves, to realize their choice and witness the richer quality of their day, by simply resisting their default and considering what else there could be – they are the ones who become aware of their prison and begin exploring their way out, much like the prisoner in Plato’s cave, who finally dares to turn away from the shadows on the wall and begins glancing towards the fire behind them.
Here as there, it comes with discomfort. The person used to the dark and experiencing light does become blinded. Resisting the default means to lose clarity and perhaps feel pain at their previous limits.
It is worth it as this is, as Wallace puts it, about “life before death,” about the “really important kind of freedom.”