David Foster Wallace on Meaning of Life or How to Think

Waking up on this beautiful spring morning I wanted to share this with my readers (and my clients). Listen for his emphasis on "the default settings" of the self, which "make us automatically think that we are the center of the world." Becoming aware, or tending to our awareness is the escape key from this default setting. Sounds like mindfulness practice to me.

I also love how he defines true freedom: ". . . attention, and awareness, and discipline and being able truly to care about other people and sacrifice for them over and over, in myriad, heady little unsexy ways. That is real freedom."

This is just one part of the talk, for the other half please follow the link.


Here is a meaty quote to ponder from the commencement speech delivered at Kenyon college in 2005.

"If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on."

I can't close a piece on DFW without mentioning his suicide. I don't have much to say at present other than again raise the connection between creative people and mental illness. BTW, one piece of fact I do know is that he hung himself as he was trying to wean off psychiatric medications he had been taking for many years for depression.