This Is Water by David Foster Wallace

         In my English class we watched a short video called “This is Water” by David Foster Wallace on the video website Youtube. The video was about how people live their everyday lives and not be mindful or aware of their surroundings.

         After the video finished the class started free writing about our personal thoughts about the video. Here are my thoughts.

         Just as the video explains, people grow up to be educated and end up in jobs where most of the time involves a daily routine of getting up in the morning, getting ready for work, working, going home, grocery shop for dinner, sleep and the day repeats. This happens to a majority of people around the world, but not to everyone. I am guilty of being one of the majorities of people. When I use to work as a full time employee I would go through the same routine every day, excluding the weekends. I would wake up early in the morning, get ready for work, drive to work, drive back home after work feeling tired, go out for dinner or buy groceries for needed food, go to sleep and my day repeats. In between certain events like, driving home, waiting in a long line to buy my groceries, and/or being stuck in traffic I always selfishly thought that everyone was slow and blamed every person surrounding me. Why can’t people drive faster? Why are they so bad at driving? What’s with this traffic? Why is this grocery line so slow? Why is this line long? Why me? When it was really me who was thinking unfairly and blaming others on something that I should take upon myself. So many negative thoughts run through my head and I end up with feeling stressed. 

I then began to think that feeling stressed would get me nowhere. I need to be more mindful and aware of my surroundings, no one can feel how I feel, but me. Which is why I strongly agree with the video “This is Water” and wrote down some themes related to the video.

         Some themes that I wrote relating to the video included the following: empathy, attitude, choice, reality, stress, perception, insensitive, awareness and selfishness.  Out of all the themes I listed I believe that awareness and selfishness are most important. People need to be aware of their surroundings and be mindful toward other people.  Having selfish thoughts will not solve a problem. Although, I understand to a certain extent that people need to let out steam, but keeping in frustrated feelings is not the way to go. All I hope for is that, just as the video explains, for people to be aware that not everyone runs the same lives. People need to learn to simply cool off, take away their selfish thoughts, and just live their life. There is no point in involving other people in your life by being negative around them. Don’t put the blame on others just because you are living a life full of stress; it is not that other person’s fault. Who’s ever life it is, his life, her life, my life, it is our own lives and no one else’s.