Seeing the water

Lately, I've really been spending time soaking (ha, you'll catch the pun later) in the commencement speech by author David Foster Wallace entitled "This is water."  I don't recall how I first came across this speech, but I've read it a few times since my diagnosis.  It was given in 2005 at, coincidentally enough, Kenyon College...which is also the location for the 100-mile finish for Pelotonia.  This video adaptation is an excerpt that catches the gist of the message...but I highly recommend reading the entire piece.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI

He starts off with this story--

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?"

He goes on to talk about how our default setting is self-centeredness....not in a preachy, negative way but in a "there's no other way for us to experience our reality than from our own perspective" way...with ourselves in the center.  And it's easy to get frustrated with the mundane boring parts of life like commuting home or going to the store...but we can make a choice as to how we see those things.

If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down. Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it. This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't.

He concludes the speech with this

I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don't just dismiss it as just some fingerwagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death. 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." "This is water."

I really believe that one thing my diagnosis and illness has taught me is to really see the water all around me.  So many things that I might have found frustrating in the past are now miraculous--lines at the grocery store, a traffic jam, something forgotten by my absent-minded husband (ok that one still gets me but not as much as before I got sick.)  I think to myself, "Yeah, this might be irritating but you're not in the hospital, you're free to do pretty much whatever you might want and this crazy disease is under control.  What do I have to be upset about?"

Tonight, as I enjoy my normal life....as I think about the email from my oncologist over the weekend summarizing my progress that says CR (complete response/remission--the best outcome) in all areas (hematology, kidney, liver/GI) and I move further and further from the dark, scary days of diagnosis and treatment, I pray God will continue to bless me with the ability to "see the water."

Amen.