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to ritualize your life

The crusade aginst sameness

A piece of wisdom that has stuck with me is from David Foster Wallace’s 2005 commencement speech to the graduating class at Kenyon College titled This is Water.  Foster Wallace makes a case for:

“how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out.”  

Wowee!

My default is to expect the worst in people. I heartily mourn my youth. And when I say youth I mean the ability to organize and live my life without being answerable to anyone. Being responsible weighs heavily on me. But there are moments of rebellion. Ways to shake things up like a snow globe. Things you can do that remind you that THIS is your one wild and precious life. And, actually, you can do whatever the fuck you want with it. Remembering that is my antidote to deadness.

That might be what I strive for all the time.  That might be what all that therapy and yoga and meditation and spiritual exploration is and has always been about for me: how to not live my life as though dead.