A Comment on a Commencement
One tweak
If you don’t know who David Foster Wallace, then I recommend this Rolling Stone article. And his book, now on my “to be read” list, Infinite Jest, considered one of the most important works of the 20th century. Pretty tall praise.
David Foster Wallace gave a commencement address in 2005 titled “This is Water.” It’s fantastic, and has been studied and commented on over the years. If you want to know how the people who heard the commencement feel about it, I invite you to read, “He Was Water” by Kevin Hartnett.
Gabe S.: My reaction immediately after the speech was “Holy crap that was awesome.” But what hit me the hardest about his speech was that it contained zero crap, zero preaching or ideology or politics or really anything at all that could even be taking as a suggestion. He stood there in front of us as one of the most humble people I’ve ever seen in front of an audience, and talked about life. The fact that he prepared this speech for us made me feel incredibly honored.
Three years later Wallace committed suicide by hanging himself on his back porch. His wife found him when she came home. He left behind a two page letter to his wife which remains private to this day.
I learned this when researching him after reading his speech. I was a little bit stunned and a lot a bit saddened.
He joins a pantheon of creative types that have ended their own lives. I had our resident internist* scrounge a list from the Web, and retained only those with which I am familiar:
1. Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
Famous Works: Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, A Room of One's Own.
Woolf dealt with lifelong mental health issues, including severe depression and possible bipolar disorder. She ended her life by drowning in the River Ouse.
2. Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
Famous Works: The Old Man and the Sea, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Hemingway experienced severe depression and physical health issues, exacerbated by alcoholism. He died by suicide with a shotgun.
3. David Foster Wallace (1962–2008)
Famous Works: Infinite Jest, Consider the Lobster.
Wallace grappled with depression and side effects from antidepressant medications. He hanged himself at his home in California.
4. Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005)
Famous Works: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hell's Angels.
Thompson, known for his gonzo journalism style, suffered from chronic pain and depression in his later years. He died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
5. Richard Brautigan (1935–1984)
Famous Works: Trout Fishing in America, In Watermelon Sugar.
Brautigan struggled with depression and alcoholism. He died by suicide, likely from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
There are others of course, and a similar list of people in the entertainment industry could be compiled. But, I’m not a musician or movie star, so I focused on the writers.
I had our intern do some further research which leads afield from here and will be explored later. I will summarize briefly that they all suffered from depression, they either were medicated professionally or on their own, most were in some sort of physical pain, and while they generally were interested and pursued the “deep questions” they seemed to be on the sidelines when it came to meaningful relationships and communal service to the common good. I am not judging, I am looking for themes. I will dig into this in a future article.
Meanwhile I will comment that I was looking for a common denominator based on one line in his address.
… the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
I had asked our intern if the above authors had any sort of “religion” in their lives, whether organized religion of the type most think of when they hear the word, or secular in nature as in organizations that foster community and service to the common good.
I put religion in quotes because I want to emphasize that the term at its root means “that which binds together.” In this context, the Sunday ritual of going to a large communal building, wearing your Sunday best, sharing ritualized meals and stories of past glories and hopes for the future, in other words tailgating at your favorite football stadium, is a religious experience.
We are drawn to this type of communion, and I believe it is important for our mental health.
BUT - as noted, I want to focus on one part of his speech that struck me.
“That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.”
I was caught by this: “the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.” The idea that this sense of loss was opposed to freedom just felt wrong.
For context, this came at the end of a focus on freedom:
But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving…. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
I could not escape the strong feeling that while the “gnawing sense” may be unconscious in us, it is necessary for us to understand and appreciate real freedom.
JRR Tolkien has some thoughts on this topic of loss. In a letter to Milton Waldman
After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of ‘truth’, and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear. There cannot be any ‘story’ without a fall—all stories are ultimately about the fall—at least not for human minds as we know them and have them. (Emphasis mine.)
He also brings this up in his1947 essay, On Fairy-Stories.
"The human mind and imagination, which have their origin in a world of suffering, could not avoid dealing with death and loss. [...] The supreme sub-creator would be an immortal, but the mortal sub-creator creates because he is aware of death and of his own mortality."
Lest you think Tolkien is just idly sitting in some leather chair waxing whimsical about fairy stories, please know that he survived trench warfare during WWI where most of his battle companions were destroyed. He understands loss.
What he is calling the sub-creator is nothing less than the story tellers who create stories and myths to reflect deeper truths about the world. I would go so far as to say essential truths.
This loss, this fall, this “gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing,” is a common touchpoint for all of us because it is REAL. It is the cosmic reverberation of the Fall of Man. But rather than being some default setting where we stumble through life unconscious and enslaved, this recognition of a core human truth can be a starting point for reaching out and connecting. A starting point for sanity and real freedom.
Wallace wanted his audience to recognize that this, this, is water. I would add that we recognize that Loss is a shared human experience and in that shared human experience lie the keys to our freedom.