David Foster Wallace once began a commencement speech to college graduates with a joke about two fish: “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 eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes ‘what the hell is water?’”
As Wallace points out, the moral is transparent: we are generally so preoccupied that we fail to notice fundamental aspects of our environment and of reality. The rest of Wallace’s speech is a sustained meditation on this point and is well worth a read or listen (for his humor as much as his wisdom), although a catholic will be disappointed by an ultimate flavor of relativism. For, while he proposes to his audience the importance of accepting a higher metaphysical principle, he is entirely diffident about how that principle should be understood. He is forced by his own uncertainty to profess that the only thing “that is capital ‘T’ True, is that we get to choose how we see the world.”
The capital “T” nonsense aside, Wallace makes an important point about our ability to shape our own perspective and about the fundamental level at which we can shift our focus with dramatic life-changing results. He reiterates this ancient cliche in clever and entertaining terms, making the necessary caveats to avoid triteness and steering clear of the frenzied obsession with productivity that is the stuff of so many “motivational” missives.
Yet, there is a shadow looming during this speech. On September 12, 2008, David Foster Wallace took his own life. Who can tell what darkness haunted the poor man? Maladies of the spirit are too various and hidden for autopsy. I cannot help wondering, however, if the troubling question, “What is water?,” remained too long obscured beyond hope.
The punchline of Wallace’s joke leaves the two young fish at a crossroads. Most likely they will swim on with only a smile at the idiosyncrasies of older fish. If, however, they perceive the fundamental level of their ignorance, they are confronted with the same dilemmas affecting any metaphysical inquiry. Within water, they have no reference point by which to distinguish, and thus define water. As they swim close to the surface, they detect a change, a difference “out there,” but they also sense immediate danger. To examine water through a clear and unambiguous lens means death.
The answer to the dilemma, of course, is to ask the older fish. Turn quickly and seek the one who knows, and he will tell many wondrous things, not only about water, but about what is beyond the water.
The moral is transparent. Metaphysical inquiry can only go so far before it requires a teacher. To be more precise, it requires a preacher; not one who will pass glibly by, but one who will say “Come, follow me.”