This Is Water

Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

— David Foster Wallace

歡迎並恭喜肯尼恩學院2005年畢業班的同學。 兩隻小魚在水裡游著，恰好遇到一隻老魚迎面游來。老魚對他們點頭致意，然後說：

「小朋友早。水怎麼樣啊？」

兩隻小魚繼續游了一會兒，其中一隻終於忍不住看著牠的同伴說：

「水是什麼鬼東西？」

Greetings and congratulations to Kenyon’s graduating class of 2005. 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 then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes

“What the hell is water?”

在美國，畢業典禮演講的標準要求，就是要調用幾個教化人心的寓言體小故事。跟那些喜歡瞎扯的類型文學比起來，這個故事的手法其實還不錯。但如果你們擔心我今天打算當那隻睿智的老魚，來向你們這些小魚解釋水是何物，那是多慮了。我不是睿智的老魚。

這個魚故事的重點只有一個，那就是：「顯而易見且至關重要的事實，通常難以察覺，無法言喻。」

This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you’re worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don’t be. I am not the wise old fish.

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.

當然，訴諸於文字難免流於平庸。事實上，對日常生活即戰場的成年人來說，這段平庸的文字卻可以具有關乎生死的重量。因此，在這麼乾爽宜人的早晨，我希望能為你們指出這點。

當然，這種演講的主要目的應該是要我告訴你們人文教育的意義為何，試著解釋，為什麼你們即將被授與的學位，有其真正的人文價值，而非只有物質收益。

Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning. Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I’m supposed to talk about your liberal arts education’s meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff.

那麼，來聊聊畢業演講中最常出現的陳腔濫調，人文教育的目的與其說是用知識填滿你們，不如說是「教你們如何思考。」如果你們如學生時代的我一樣，一定不會想聽到這種話，說不定還覺得有點被侮辱，因為竟然有人說你們要人教才知道如何思考。畢竟，能被這麼優秀的大學錄取，就足以證明你們已經懂得如何思考。

但我要向你們指出，人文教育裡的陳腔濫調其實一點也不侮辱人。因為像這樣一個如此重要的思考教育，其內容非關思考的能力，而是關乎思考內容的選擇。

So let’s talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about “teaching you how to think”. If you’re like me as a student, you’ve never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think.

But I’m going to pose it to you that the liberal arts cliché turns out not to be insulting at all, because the really significant education in thinking that we’re supposed to get in a place like this, isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about.

如果你認為，討論你本來就能夠完全自主選擇的思考內容，顯然是在浪費時間。那麼我想請你想一想魚和水。暫時將顯而易見的事物有何價值的疑慮擱置在一旁。

以下是另一個教化人心的小故事： 荒蠻的阿拉斯加郊區，兩個男人並肩坐在酒吧裡。其中一個信仰虔誠，而另一個是無神論者。兩人正就上帝的存在而激辯著。酒過三巡，氣氛格外熱烈。無神論者說：

「聽我說，其實我不是毫無根據就否定神，其實我不是沒經歷過那些奇蹟和祈禱之類的事。就在上個月，我被一場可怕的暴風雪困住了，我完全搞不清方向，甚麼也看不見，氣溫是零下五十度。所以我就試了；我跪在雪地，大聲呼喊：『上帝啊！如果祢真的存在，我被暴風雪困住了，如果祢不幫忙我就會死啊。』」

此時，酒吧裡，納悶的信仰者看著無神論者：

「那你現在一定信神了吧？」他說 「畢竟你現在還活的好好的啊。」

無神論者雙眼一翻：

「才不是，是因為剛巧有幾個愛斯基摩人經過，告訴我回營區的路怎麼走。」

If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, I’d ask you to think about fish and water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your skepticism about the value of the totally obvious.

Here’s another didactic little story: There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says:

“Look, it’s not like I don’t have actual reasons for not believing in God. It’s not like I haven’t ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn’t see a thing, and it was 50 below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out ‘Oh, God, if there is a God, I’m lost in this blizzard, and I’m gonna die if you don’t help me.’”

And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled.

“Well then you must believe now,” he says, “After all,here you are, alive.”

The atheist just rolls his eyes.

“No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp.”

以所謂人文教育的標準去分析這個故事，其實相當簡單：

「兩個人經歷的事件雖然完全相同，卻可能產生兩種完全不同的認知。原因是這兩人所信仰的模式不同，將經驗建構成認知的方式也不同。」

因為我們推崇對不同信仰與多樣性採取寬容態度的緣故，人文教育不會要求我們去分析，是否該主張何者的詮釋為真而何者謬誤。這樣很好，只不過我們會不停地討論，這些個人模式和信仰來自何處，意義是從這兩個人內在的何處而來？彷彿每個人對這世界的基本態度以及看待經驗的意義，是天生註定的。如同身高與鞋子尺寸，或者說這是吸收母體文化的自然產物，例如語言。彷彿我們建構意義的方式其實並非個人有意圖的選擇。

It’s easy to run this story through kind of a standard liberal arts analysis:

“The exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people’s two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. ”

Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy’s interpretation is true and the other guy’s is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person’s most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice.

此外，傲慢也佔了很重要的因素，這個沒有信仰的傢伙完全篤定，完全排除經過的愛斯基摩人，跟他祈求幫助這件事有任何關聯。沒錯，許多有信仰的人很傲慢，有時連他們對事物的詮釋也令人覺得傲慢，他們甚至可能比無神論者更討厭，至少是我們多數人討厭的對象。但是宗教教條主義者的問題，其實與故事中那位不信神的人完全一樣：毫不質疑且盲目深信，思想封閉的程度近乎自閉，成了一個不知自己已被囚禁的囚犯。

Plus, there’s the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They’re probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogmatists’ problem is exactly the same as the story’s unbeliever: blind certainty, a close- mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn’t even know he’s locked up.

重點是，這故事是那些教會我如何思考所見的事情之一，而這才是其中的真義。將姿態稍微放低一點，稍微喚起質疑自我與質疑自我信念的態度。因為大部份那些我不加思索就輕信的事，到後來卻發現不但錯得離譜而且謊話連篇，我吃了不少苦才學到這個教訓。我預料你們這些畢業生將來也會有一樣的遭遇。以下就是一個錯得離譜，而我不加思索便輕信的例子，而且所有我當下的經驗都支持這件事情：

我堅信宇宙絕對繞著我而轉，宇宙萬物就數我最真實，且最生動鮮明。

The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of:

Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.

我們很少思索這種與生俱來的自我中心觀，因為在社交角度上這很令人反感。但幾乎我們每個人都這樣想，這是我們的系統預設值，一出生就寫入我們的大腦中。想想看，你們過去所有的經驗都告訴你：你是世界的中心，你們所經歷的世界來自你們眼前、身後、左右，來自你們的電視或螢幕…等等。而旁人的想法和感覺必須要藉某種方式傳遞給你們，但是，那些來自你們自身的想法和感覺卻更為直接、更為迫切、更為真實。

We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centredness because it’s so socially repulsive. But it’s pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute centre of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.

請別擔心，我不會開始遵遵教誨你們何謂熱情，或種種所謂美德之類的東西。這無關美德，關乎我的選擇，試著以某種方式改變或跳脫我的天性與寫入的預設值，這種設定實際上深深以自我中心為原則，然後再以此種自我濾鏡來詮釋所見所聞。那些有能力調整自我中心預設值的人，我們通常稱其「適應力高超」我希望你們知道，這種描述並非隨口說說。

Please don’t worry that I’m getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other- directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It’s a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being “well-adjusted”, which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.

就以這間校史顯赫的學院為例，有個顯而易見的問題，那就是調整我們預設值的工程需要多少實際的知識或智慧？這個問題相當狡詐，而且很可能是大學教育最危險的一環，至少我個人深受其害。那就是：

大學教育促使我有過度理智的傾向，這使得我專注於腦中的抽象辯證，而忽略眼前正在發生的事，只關注腦海中所發生的一切種種。

Given the triumphant academic setting here, an obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default setting involves actual knowledge or intellect. This question gets very tricky. Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education—at least in my own case— Is that it enables my tendency to over- intellectualise stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.

我想你們現在知道了，要保持警醒與注意力比起讓心中滔滔不絕的獨白催眠自己要來得困難得多，說不定此刻正是如此。畢業二十年後，我逐漸體會到，使我學會如何思考的陳腔濫調式人文教育，其實是萃取智慧後的吉光片羽，是更為深刻與嚴肅的思想：

「學習如何思考，其實就是在鍛練控制、掌握自己思考的方式與方向，這表示你擁有足夠清醒的意識能力，能夠選擇將注意力放在什麼事物上，能夠決定如何從這經驗中建構意義。」

因為當你們進入成人階段後，如果還無法運用這種選擇能力，你們會死得很慘。想想那句古老的陳腔濫調：

「心智是傑出的僕人，卻是糟糕的主人。」

As I’m sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotised by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). 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. Think of the old cliché about

“The mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master”.

這話一如許多陳腔濫調，表面看來實在是缺乏說服力且蒼白無趣。實則顯現了一個重要且可怕的事實：幾乎每個成年人開槍自殺時，都選擇了自己的腦袋。而這絕非巧合，他們要打死那個糟糕的主人。事實上，早在扣下板機之前，大部份的自殺者已經死了。在去掉華而不實的部份後，我認為人文教育真正的價值應該是：

「如何避免你們那種舒適富足、受人尊敬的成年生活流於行屍走肉。避免被自己的大腦奴役，避免被自我中心預設值奴役，認為自己是完完全全獨一無二的主宰，如此日復一日地過下去。」

This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about:

“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. ”

或許聽起來誇張了點，好像在瞎扯一些抽象的道理。那就說得具體一點。擺在眼前的事實是，你們這些畢業生其實對「日復一日」的真正意義一無所悉。但這剛好就是大多數美國成年人的生活寫照。這是一般畢業演講不會提及的內容。它包含了無趣、一成不變的日常以及微不足道的挫折，在場的父母和年紀稍長的人，都很清楚我在說什麼。

That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let’s get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what “day in day out” really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I’m talking about.

舉個例子，就拿一個成年人平凡的一日作息來說明好了： 早上起床，迎接你那份需要大學學歷且富有挑戰性的白領工作，你辛苦工作了八或十個小時。當一日將盡，你感到疲憊與莫名壓力，只想回家好好吃頓晚餐，接著也許讓自己放空個一個小時，然後早早上床。當然啦，因為明天起床後這一切還得重來一次。然後，你想起家裡沒食物了，因為這份富有挑戰性的工作讓你整個星期沒時間採購。所以，你下班後必須坐進你的車並開到超市。現在是下班時間，交通當然是塞到爆，因此到超市的時間遠超過往常所需。當你終於抵達了，超市卻人滿為患。當然啦，因為所有上班族都想趁這時擠進超市買些生活用品。超市裡的照明亮得可怕，悶死人的背景音樂或是偶像團體的流行歌無所不在，可以說全世界你最不想待的地方就是這裡。但你無法速戰速決。在這間燈光刺眼的商店裡，你得穿梭許多令人眼花撩亂的走廊尋找你要的物品。然後你得指揮面前那輛破推車，穿過其他那些推著購物車滿臉倦容而行色匆匆的人…(因為這是場漫長的畢業典禮，諸如此類的廢話我就刪掉了。)

By way of example: Let’s say it’s an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you’re tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there’s no food at home. You haven’t had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It’s the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it’s the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it’s pretty much the last place you want to be but you can’t just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store’s confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to manoeuvre your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony)

終於，晚餐的材料湊齊了，但你發現雖然現在正值下班尖峰時段，而開放結帳的櫃台卻不敷使用，所以結帳隊伍長得不可思議。這種鳥事讓人火大。但你不能將挫折發洩在那位負責結帳而忙得快發瘋的女士身上，她超時工作，而且這份無意義的例行工作單調的程度，是所有我們這些名校畢業生無法想像的。無論如何，你終於排到櫃台前了，你付了食物的錢，然後聽到一句「祝您今天愉快。」那語氣聽起來根本就像個喪屍。然後你得推著購物車載著那個薄薄一層且品味詭異的塑膠購物袋。而且其中一個車輪發瘋似地總向左偏，你艱困地一路穿過推車被四處隨意停放且擁擠的停車場，然後你得開車擠進尖峰時刻的路上回家。穿過緩慢而笨拙的休旅車車潮，諸如此類的鳥事。

And eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren’t enough check-out lanes open even though it’s the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can’t take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line’s front, and you pay for your food, and you get told to “Have a nice day” in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera.

當然，在場每個人都有過這種經歷，但這部份還沒真正成為你們這些畢業生的日常生活，那種日復一日、年復一年的日子。但這是遲早的事。而且會是更枯燥乏味、更討人厭，看起來毫無意義的日常生活。但這不是重點，重點是發生這類瑣碎而令人挫折的鳥事時，才是發揮決擇能力的絕妙時機。因為塞車與擁擠的走道，與大排長龍的結帳隊伍讓我有時間思考。如果我沒有足夠的自覺意識來決定思考的方式與關注的目標，每次購物都會是場令人勃然大怒的悲劇。因為我天生的預設值會認定這種情況都是因我而來，因為我飢腸轆轆、因為我疲憊不堪、因為我歸心似箭，看起來好像全世界都擋在我面前，而那些擋路的人是誰？幾乎每個都面目可憎、相貌愚蠢笨得跟牛一樣還有雙死魚眼，排隊結帳時沒個人樣。或是說這些討厭鬼真沒品，排隊時講手機還不懂得克制音量。試想，這是個對其他人多不公平的想法。

Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn’t yet been part of you graduates’ actual life routine, day after week after month after year.But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don’t make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I’m gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it’s going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line. And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is.

當然，如果我的預設值更具有社會意識與人文素養一點。我會在黃昏的車陣中花點時間，對所有巨大笨重又礙事的休旅車、悍馬車與十二汽缸卡車表達厭惡之意。這樣自私又浪費地消耗油箱裡四十加侖的汽油。我還能忍受那些在保險桿貼著愛國標語和宗教箴言的駕駛，其實是選擇高耗油車種的自私者。而懷著自私之心而設計出的車子，由醜陋而……

（此時響起熱烈的掌聲）

……這就是做事不經大腦的例子。選擇高耗油車種的自私者、懷著自私自利之心而設計出的車子、由醜陋而不值一提的好鬥者駕駛。我能想像後代子孫會如何鄙視我們，因為我們正在浪費未來的石油，或許還把天候搞壞了。我們是如此嬌縱、愚笨、自私、可憎，而我們這世代的消費風氣實在是爛透了，罄竹難書…你們懂吧。

Or, of course, if I’m in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV’s and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks, burning their wasteful, selfish, 40-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest [responding here to loud applause] (this is an example of how NOT to think, though) most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers. And I can think about how our children’s children will despise us for wasting all the future’s fuel, and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and selfish and disgusting we all are, and how modern consumer society just sucks, and so forth and so on.You get the idea.

而如果我在超市和高速公路時選擇這麼想，無可厚非，因為很多人都會這樣。只是，這種想法很容易自動產生以至於我們甚至連選擇都不用做，因為這是我先天的預設值。當我的思考處於自動模式，而無法察覺我已將自己放在世界的中心，那麼我就順理成章地經歷了成年生活中，那些無趣、挫折與擁擠的那部分，因此，這世界的輕重緩急便取決於我當下的需求和感覺。

If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn’t have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It’s the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I’m operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the centre of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world’s priorities.

當然，我想說的是遇到這些情況時，我可以採取完全不同的思考方式。在這個交通狀況裡，身處車陣時所有車子都停下來擋住我的路，這些休旅車的駕駛，有些也許曾遭遇可怕的交通事故，這並非不可能。這經驗讓他們覺得開車很恐怖，以至於他們的心理治療師都要他們去弄一輛又大又重的休旅車，開車時才能感到安全。或是剛剛超我車的那輛悍馬，說不定是由一位父親駕駛，旁邊的小孩也許受傷或者生病，他想載小朋友去醫院。而他的理由比我更正當且迫切：事實上，擋住他的路的人其實是我。

或者我可以選擇強迫自己，去考慮這種可能性：結帳隊伍中的人每個都跟我一樣感到厭煩和挫折。而其中有些人的生活說不定比我艱苦，比我無趣，比我痛苦。

The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it’s not impossible that some of these people in SUV’s have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he’s trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he’s in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I, who am in HIS way.

Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket’s checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.

再說一次，請別認為我是在對你們進行道德勸說或是告訴你們應當如何思考，或是有任何人期望你們自發地去做這件事。因為這很困難，而這需要意志力和努力，如果你們跟我一樣，有一天你們會力不從心，或是乾脆選擇放棄。

然而大部分的日子裡，如果你們清醒的程度足夠讓自己做出選擇。你們會決定從不同角度看待結帳隊伍中這位剛剛對著自己的小孩大吼且兩眼呆滯濃妝艷抹的胖女人。也許她平常不是這樣，也許她為了陪伴骨癌末期的丈夫，已經連續三個晚上在病床旁握著他的手，無法入眠。又或者這位女士是汽車監理所的基層員工，昨天才發揮了公務人員的佛心，順手幫你們的配偶免去了一些令人火大又討厭的繁文縟節。當然，看起來是不太像，但也不無可能。端看你們如何看待。

Again, please don’t think that I’m giving you moral advice, or that I’m saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it’s hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won’t be able to do it, or you just flat out won’t want to.

But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider.

如果你們不假思索地認為自己知道真相為何，如果你們要採用先天的預設值，那麼你們就會和我一樣，或許沒想過真相很可能沒那麼惱人也沒那麼可悲。如果你們真的學到如何操控思考的方向，就會發現還有其他情境選擇存在。而這會成為你們真正的內在力量，使你們體會到自己之所以淪落到這種悶熱擁擠步調遲鈍的消費者地獄之中，其原因不僅耐人尋味而且神秘，那能使情感之火燃燒的，也正是那能創造繁星的力量：

愛與友誼之情，這種宇宙萬物內在深處的神秘的一體性。

不是說神祕事物必為真理。獨一無二的真理是，你們必須決定，嘗試以何種角度切入觀察。而我要說，這才是真正的教育所能孕育出的心靈自由。學習成為俱備高度適應力的人。你們必須能夠有意識地選擇何者有意義而何者沒有，也必須能夠決定何者值得崇拜。

If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars:

“Love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.“

Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it.This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.

有些事情看似詭異卻是事實： 成年人的日常戰場上，其實沒有所謂的無神論者。沒有人不崇拜某種事物，每個人都崇拜。我們唯一能夠選擇的，就是崇拜的對象。我們之所以不由自主地選擇某個神祇，某種心靈皈依來崇拜，不論是耶穌基督、阿拉、耶和華、現代巫術的母神或是佛教的四聖諦，抑或是某種神聖不容質疑的道德標準，是因為，若是做了其他選擇，我們的生命差不多都會被其吞噬掉。

如果你們崇拜金錢與物質，如果你們依賴這些東西來追求生命的真正意義，那麼你們將永遠無法滿足，將永遠無法感到滿足。事實就是如此。崇拜你們的身體、美貌、性魅力，你們永遠都會自覺醜陋，當歲月的痕跡浮現，當人們為了送你最後一程而哀悼時，你的心早已死了一百萬次。這種道理，我們或多或少都懂。

Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship–be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles–is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.

而這種道理編入了神話、諺語、老生常談、雋語和寓言之中，是所有偉大故事的骨架。這裡面的訣竅只有一個，讓這個真理成為日常生活中意識覺察的最高原則。

崇拜權力，最後會使你們感到虛弱與害怕。因此追求更多的權力以求凌駕他人，好能麻痺自己的恐懼；崇拜自己的智識，當個貌似聰明的人，最後會使你們覺得自己其實是個愚蠢的騙子，永遠處於事跡即將敗露的恐懼中。但是這些由內隱隱而生的崇拜模式，並非因為它們本質邪惡或罪孽深重，而是因為這些崇拜行為起於毫無意識，是與生俱來的預設值設定。這些崇拜之心會讓你們逐漸沉淪，日復一日，漸漸毫無意識地對眼前所見有越來越多的意見與標準。

On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.

They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing.

所謂的現實世界並不會阻擋你們採用預設設定。因為這個由人、財富、權力組成的真實世界，正愉悅地浸泡在恐懼、憤怒、挫敗、慾望與自我崇拜的醬缸之中。我們當前的文化正忙於服務上述這些以各種方式產生驚人財富、舒適生活與個人自由的支配力量。

在我們這顆頭顱大小的王國裡追求當家作主的自由，使我們獨立於萬物中心。這種自由是有許多值得推崇之處。當然，自由有許多種，然而其中最重要的一種，你們鮮少會在外面這個充滿目的與欲望的大世界裡聽到或談到……。

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom.

The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull- sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it.

But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving….

這種自由非常重要，它需要注意力、覺察力、自制力，能夠每一天都發自內心地關心他人，以各式各樣瑣碎而且毫不迷人的方式，一而再再而三地為他人犧牲奉獻。這才是真正的自由，學習如何思考與懂得如何思考。否則就只能進入無意識的預設設定，在毫無意義的競賽裡，毫不間斷地在擁有與失去的永劫回歸中痛苦著。

我知道這番話大概既無聊又沉悶，也沒如你們預期畢業演講該聽到的啟發。我想說的是，據我所知，這是褪去了所有華美修辭獨一無二的真理。當然，你們也能以自己的角度詮釋，但請別當做這是一場勞拉博士搖搖手指的佈道大會而毫不上心，這番話絕對與道德、宗教、教條或某些死後世界的大哉問無關。

The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing. I know that this stuff probably doesn’t sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don’t just dismiss it as just some finger- wagging Dr Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.

這個獨一無二的真理，與死前的人生有關，與理想教育的真正價值有關，幾乎與知識無關，而完全跟意識覺察有關。對事物的覺察是如此基本而實在，真理自始自終隱於我們生活周遭平凡無奇之處，以至於我們必需不斷地提醒我們自己：

「這就是水。」

「這就是水。」

The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.

It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

“This is water.”

“This is water.”

在日復一日的成年生活中，要保持覺知和活力是出人意表的困難，這表示另一句耳熟能詳的陳腔濫調也是對的：

「活到老學到老。」何時開始？就是現在。

祝你們擁有的不只是運氣。

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: “Your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.

I wish you way more than luck.

— Reference:

1.

《This is Water 這是水》 ─　David Foster Wallace　2005年於2005 年在 Kenyon College 的演講

2008年9月12日， David Foster Wallace 上吊身亡。這位被譽為 “二十年來最具影響力，最富創造力的作家之一” 的 David Foster Wallace 受憂鬱症纏身二十幾年，數次改變療法而無效後，他選擇了一種相當痛苦的死法，拒絕活著­。

David Foster Wallace 曾被時代雜誌選入 1923 至 2005年的百大小說家，他的作品帶著濃厚的諷刺意味與黑色幽默，文章的思慮縝密，充­滿哲理的思辨。他自殺身亡後，這場於 2005 年在 Kenyon College 的演講稿便由 Llittle, Brown and Company 在 2009 年發行成書，書名就叫 This is Water，當時引發了不少迴響。

2013 年五月，短片製作公司 The Glossary 根據這場演講做了一段九分鐘的精美影片，短短十幾天吸引了超過四百八十幾萬的人觀看。

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwEMOt…

然而，David Foster Wallace 想對那些即將邁入社會的畢業生說的話，短短九分鐘影片是無法完整表達的。於是我將全長­二十多分鐘的演講加上中文字幕，希望能讓更多華文世界的人認識這位作家，瞭解他的思想­。

整場演講有三個重點：同理心，思考方式的選擇，成年生活必然的孤寂。他在演講中多次提­到自己不是個好榜樣，希望同學不要重蹈他的覆轍。而三年後他就選擇了自殺。

「是日已過，命亦隨減，如魚少水，斯有何樂。」這句話出自法句經，也許當年的 David Foster Wallace 有同樣的感慨吧。