There’s an essay by David Foster Wallace called This Is Water that I would recommend everyone read. I’m not one hundred percent certain that Mr. Wallace ever intended this work as an essay, because he first delivered it as a commencement speech. But his words of eloquence are easily available on-line, and so I repeat that the essay is well worth the effort to locate, read and contemplate.
If you read This Is Water and decide that more of David is a good idea, then I strongly suggest you keep a dictionary nearby. I tried to read Infinite Jest, but I didn’t finish because I kept losing track of his thought process. Its difficult to grasp the entirety of a deliberation when you have to look up the definition of at least one word per paragraph, and so I eventually gave up.
The book still sits in our bookshelves somewhere, and I hope to find the discipline to finish it one day.
David was obviously intelligent, and although I felt like Infinite Jest was a demonstration of that intelligence, This Is Water is something altogether different. It’s thoughtful yes, but it’s also simple and profound and well worth some contemplation time. The good news is that a dictionary isn’t a necessity to understand what he has to say.
By the way, after years of fighting depression Mr. Wallace committed suicide. I suspect the world is a depressing place when you’re smarter than ninety nine percent of the humanoid air breathers. After a while all you see are idiots in charge with the herd happily in tow, and it’s too much to endure.
But who knows? He may have had a chemical imbalance and his world was going to be depressing regardless of his I.Q.
Anyway.
This is water is about situational awareness. He begins the commencement with two juvenile fish swimming in some variety of H2O. The young fish come upon an older fish who asks hey boys how’s the water? The young fish look at each other and one of them asks the other, what’s water?
It’s a great beginning and to understand the rest, you’re going to have to read it, because I’m here today to bitch about the fish that are unaware what they’re swimming in is water. David would I think not be pleased with me, because his theme throughout was pleading for the masses to provide some thought and ultimately some sympathy for the fish that can’t grasp where they’re swimming.
I take David’s advice as often as I’m able, because the essay has stayed with me for years. But some days I’m of the opinion that those unaware swimmers can go and fuck themselves. The sooner they unwittingly bite a lure or swim into a net, the better off the rest of the water dwellers will be.
Today is one of those days.
Today was a series of slow burns I had to endure involving the situationally unaware. I’m actually being assumptively generous with the unaware designation. Some of today may have involved situationally aware but not giving a fuck people. The first group can be dangerous because of negligence. The second group is dangerous because they’re selfish border line psychopaths.
For sake of argument I’m going to assume that the percentage heavily favors the blissfully unaware, with only a small group of aware dickbags added to today’s mix.
I’m going to provide some examples, but I’m compelled to add that I was bitchy today, and David’s advice of empathy for the school of fellow swimmers was in short supply and rapidly depleted.
It all started at a fucking traffic circle. A one lane simple traffic circle. An innovation for our town from a few years back that still manages to baffle far too many of the motoring fish. Chordates who haven’t figured out that using your signal light is imperative to the efficiency of the circle.
But today was a new experience . Today I was in the traffic circle and indicating an exit to my right. A woman in a Tahoe was approaching the traffic circle and I thought the dumb bitch was going to broadside me. But at the last second she slammed on her brakes and then leaned on her horn. Finally with a face full of rage she soundlessly screamed at me and gave me the double finger.
Apparently Tahoe fish is unaware of how a traffic circle works, but is none the less confident that whatever understanding she does possess is correct. That confidence would explain the fuck off gesture aimed at me I think. I wanted to stop my vehicle and ask her what her problem was, but it’s moving traffic and I might have gotten pepper sprayed for being threatening, so I kept going. But as I drove to my next fish encounter I found myself getting pissed off because I was sure she was going home to share a story of some guy that cut her off. She had a passenger though, and so I held out some hope that the other lady in the SUV possibly did understand how traffic circles function and provided that information to the fish driver. It was only a glimmer of hope though. Fish tend to school and it’s likely that the passenger was as equally unaware.
I made it through the traffic circle without further incident and made my way to my next order of business. I needed to pick up some ingredients for tomorrow’s supper, and there’s a well stocked corner store that we like and it’s close by. Convenient, and for some reason it seems that the unaware are disproportionally attracted to convenient. As you arrive at this establishment you have two choices. You can park facing the doors, in which case around six vehicles can park comfortably. Or you can park parallel with the doors and eliminate any opportunity for your fellow shoppers to find somewhere to leave their vehicle. There was a half ton in front of me as I neared the grocer and they used their signal light, so I took that as a sign of awareness and anticipated the driver might actually understand the courtesy of forethought that would allow other people to park.
Nope.
She pulled in parallel and eliminated four parking spots. I’m not sure why this annoys me as much as it does, and each time it happens I have to supress an urge to mimic the Tahoe lady at the traffic circle. But it would be a waste of time I think. If I were to lean on my horn and give her the finger I’m sure that she would be baffled by my actions.
Because she’s situationally unaware. The concept of allowing space for other people doesn’t even occur to her and she would likely have not an inkling of what the horn and dual fuck you fingers were about. So I drove half a block away and found somewhere else to park.
The purchases went without incident. I thought my driving chores were complete but my phone rang and my wife sent me on one last assignment. That errand meant I had to endure the traffic circle again, and it was getting dark which meant that everyone was leaving work. Which meant that the unaware were out in droves, and the odds of another traffic circle irritation were high. However I made it through without incident and proceeded to my next stop.
Which also involved parking, that for some reason is a perpetual challenge for the situationally unaware.
I mentioned it was dark, but it’s also nearing the end of winter so the weather is around zero, give or take a couple of degree’s. Actually kind of balmy for Northwestern Ontario in March. The pizza place I was dispatched to has diners sitting at the window, and as you pull in your lights illuminate those diners well enough to see any flaws they may have from teen aged acne issues. I shut my vehicle off to spare them the glare. But as I was undoing my seatbelt another driver pulled into the spot beside me. They left their vehicle running with bright blue halogen lights lighting up the couple at the window. The driver fucked around for a bit, looking for her purse I think, and then exited and left her lights on and vehicle running. She completely missed the window diners using the menu’s to try and block the blinding illumination she had provided them as she made her way into the pizza place.
Blissfully fucking unaware.
Blissfully unaware is in of itself simply a condition. The problem is that the condition causes more conditions. Blinded diners being the least problematic of those conditions. In some circumstances, the unaware can and will cause bodily harm, property damage and even fatalaties.
I think that if the endlessly unaware live long enough that it’s a mathematical certainty that they will eventually send someone’s vehicle to a body shop, or a person to a medical body shop.
And it’s preventable. You can train yourself to be situationally aware. David Foster suggests as much in his essay, but his focus is on understanding the unaware. I’m looking at it from a different perspective and that’s to encourage the unaware to elevate their game. Look around for fuck sakes. Anticipate the effect your actions or inactions might have on your fellow fish.
Because we’re all in the water.