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.

Suicides in Spring

I found this article titled “Clues in the Cycle of Suicides” in the New York Times. It dispels a popular belief about suicides: it is during spring and early summer when suicides peak, not winter, which I thought would be the period with the highest number of suicides. Winter’s long stretches of darkness and cold, along with the holidays that tend to intensify loneliness and isolation contribute to increased symptoms of depression. In contrast, spring brings warmth and a promise of hope with another cycle of natural life.

To explain the connection between spring and suicides, article summarizes very interesting recent research concerning the relationship between inflammation and depression, and the decreased production of melatonin to the spike of symptoms of agitation and mania for those diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression, raising the point that genetics (nature) contributes to development and symptoms of mental illness.

What I found most fascinating was the concept of the “broken promise” syndrome, which I interpret as the feeling of being let down because spring did not eliminate their despair. Maybe the bright cheeriness of spring made despair seem even darker – hopelessness worsened because spring’s promise of hope and renewal did not apply to them, unlike rest of the natural world. Not feeling better in spring became yet another indicator of their emotional and spiritual alienation.

When thinking about it this way, I realize I am only beginning to grasp the enormity of human despair and suffering and the interplay between nature and nurture. But rather than feeling overwhelmed by it I feel emboldened to meeting the challenge of helping people reconnect to themselves and to help them understand that nature does indifferently work against them. In my experience working with clients, understanding the genetics component can help ease the stigma that often comes with a diagnosis and help them take steps toward self-acceptance.