I rarely, if ever, save a copy of an article to my computer as I trust the great benevolent Internet to store and make searchable anything I would ever need in the future. But I simply cannot take a gamble with something so precious and beautiful and this commencement speech given my David Foster Wallace. I have never read his books, Infinite Jest being his most famous, but this article brought tears to me eyes both times I read it: the first time on my own early in the morning and the second time with my wife later that day.
If we would all work just a little bit harder (myself most of all) at moving out of our default way of being and thinking and choose to consider others we would have made a huge step towards the kind of society we are seeking.
Thanks for posting this, Steve.
Whenever I meet someone new or try to get better acquainted, I usually remember (after years of trying to reduce my stereotyping/pigeonholing of people) to not slavishly asking about occupation, whether he/she’s LDS, where he/she lives, etc.
Making this effort helps me focus instead on finding something I have in common, or perhaps on asking something such as, “What do you like to do for fun?”
It’s complicated even further in my age group, where asking, “What do you do?” implies you want to know what their occupation is (but they may have none as a young person) and asking, “Where do you go to school/What are studying?” implies you think they’re not age enough, etc. to have a career. I’ll have to think about finding a better question, maybe your question, “What do you like to do for fun?” to avoid these potentially uncomfortable situations.