Water?

I just wanna mention a little bit about what my English class went through today. We had a discussion about David Wallace's speech, coined "This is Water."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/sep/20/fiction

Simply put, the speech talked about how self-centered everyone is and yet no one seems to notice. This "default-setting" of being so incredibly yet naturally self-centered contributes greatly to how each individual deal with daily routines and situations. If you only think of yourself and how you feel, you can almost never take into account of other people's feelings, even if there is the possibility of them having an even worse day than you are having, or in a more dire situation that actually gives them reasons to dread.

For example: you may be fuzzing about how slow a line is, or how dead the traffic is, or even how boring a chemistry lecture is. If the "default-setting" kicks in and affects what you take from this annoyance, you may end up simply having a bad day because it is unfavorable. However, if you take into account of the feelings of other people-maybe how the lady at the counter is her first day and she's having a tough time keeping up the pace of the orders, or how someone else in the traffic needs to rush to the hospital, or how the professor is trying to do a good job so he doesn't get fired. It's a matter of sensitively and the willingness to accept that you are not the only one who have needs, that sometimes other people have more needs than you. Then, if you somehow find yourself stepping outside that "default-setting" mindset, you will experience your day differently.

In another words, you start counting your blessings. That you have money to stay in line to buy a meal for yourself, that you don't have to walk miles in the cold because you have a car, or that your parents made it possible for you to get an education.

Sometimes it's the little things that make life more enjoyable than you think it is, and I think Wallace reminded me just that.