You vs. a Rat, Who's Winning?

    So lets say that you were to join a competition, and everyone was just like you trying to get the same thing, everything. You might be thinking how is this possible? You cant get everything. Everything isn't a thing to get. There's a life where some may choose to keep looking mindlessly like this, and others where they actively choose to look forward past the superficial things. Life can be beautiful or it can be ugly, but however it is, it's in your hands. 

    The commencement speech "This is Water" by David Foster Wallace to the graduating class in Kenyon College describes the life in which some follow their "default-setting" of a mindset. This mindset is dull and superficial in the way where we can't see or feel past what's just around us, or "unconsciousness" as Wallace describes it. He encourages the upcoming independent adults to seek out a more wide view of life -- one where you are capable of looking past the ideas that would normally go overlooked. 

    "The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the "rat race" -- the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing." The consequences of not choosing this freedom from the mindset that you can so easily slip into is emptiness. Why not choose to be full and accepting of things around you, allowing your senses to be heightened, allowing you to see more, to feel more. 

    So lets say that you were to join a competition, and everyone was just like you trying to get the same thing, would you win? 

Comments

  1. Katherine ParkSeptember 14, 2025 at 1:34 PM

    Yes! I would win, I am the biggest default-minded rat. But, I agree with you. I liked how you said, "Everything isn't a thing to get", you really showed how life can't be summed up by materialism, its all about the mindset and living to the fullest.

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