2 IDEAS FROM ME
We are immersed in a psychological environment of assumptions, inherited beliefs, ego, habits, and identities just as fish are immersed in water. We generally don’t notice the water. An experimental growth mindset and clarity of who we really are in terms of our true nature, signature strengths, and highest values give us the ability to notice the water. Once we notice it, we can choose to pay attention to Reality rather than Delusion, Accept rather than Resist the truth, Investigate with hollow-bones curiosity rather than be Oblivious, and Nurture with Non-identification rather than Personalization (RAINDROP).
Water is the equivalent to the “unexamined current state” of our view of experience. The last human freedom is the ability to choose how we interpret experience and respond to it. What we choose to pay attention to determines the reality of our experience.
2 QUOTES FROM SAGES
“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?” The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, I’d ask you to think about fish and water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your scepticism about the value of the totally obvious. The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death. It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple 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.” It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.”—David Foster Wallace, Kenyan College Commencement 2005.
“This is Water” is a call to wake up from automatic living - to become conscious of the mental filters through which we experience life, and deliberately choose attention, empathy, humility, and meaning rather than allowing our default ego-centered reactions to run our lives.”—David Foster Wallace
1 QUESTION FOR YOU TO EXPLORE
What the hell is water?
Namaste,
Duane Nelson
