Full transcript here 👋 Hey, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. This is your life. This is your chance. Listen.

The word for today is water, and it may seem evident where I’m going with this. You should drink water, instead of sugary or alcoholic or caffeine-filled beverages. Well, that may be true, but I’d instead like to tell a story. Two young fish were swimming happily along in the ocean... (stop me if you’ve heard this one before). An older fish swims by in the opposite direction and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” The two young fish swim on and eventually one turns to the other and asks, “What the hell is water?” You might have your own interpretation of this story, but David Foster Wallace summarizes his tale by saying, “The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.” I think that’s part of why I started this podcast. If you don’t fast forward through the intro, you might notice that each episode starts with a call to attention: “This is your life. This is your chance.” It’s a call to look for the water around you and realize that you have some control over large AND small aspects of your life. If you listen to the commencement speech, where the fish story originated, Foster Wallace goes on to say, “Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.”

Today’s concrete challenge is to write down some thoughts about the water around you. What have you been experiencing but not registering? What is that “most obvious, important reality” in your life? Foster Wallace gives us a hint in identifying it. Usually, it’s that thing that’s difficult to talk about.

If you want to commit, say the following phrase: “I will describe the water around me.”

I’ll keep the music playing while you get it done, and don’t miss the soundtrack at the end of this episode.

Before you go, repeat the following soundtrack, “I am the kind of person who stops to reflect.”

Let me know if this made a difference in your day by leaving a comment in your podcast app or at concrete.win/today.

Check back tomorrow for a new challenge. Until then.

References:

This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio)

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