Lettuce be aware of our default, subconscious thought patterns.
“There are two young fish swimming along who happen to meet an older fish. The older fish nods at them and says:
‘Morning boys, how’s the water?’
The two young fish swim on for a bit and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and asks:
‘What the hell is water?’”
Our natural tendencies, attitudes and beliefs of the world are often the hardest to see and recognize. We interpret our experience through our own lens of self and rarely question our hardwired default settings.
Our ‘water’ is largely influenced by invisible subconscious patterning and social conditioning. Once we zoom out and closely examine the water we’re swimming in, we have a choice. We can choose to stay in that automatic default setting, or we can consciously decide to change our thinking. The so-called ‘real world’ encourages us to blindly swim in the murky water, exhausted in an effort to succeed in an environment whose default settings of money, power, fame determine our self-worth and value.
Question everything. And most importantly, know the water you’re swimming in.
Watch David Foster Wallace’s full commencement speech: