The World We Envision

As all of you know by now, the name of this weekly column is I’ve Been Thinking. I named it this years ago because I wanted to aim to share with you what’s on my mind and in my heart every week.

The other day, I stumbled upon a David Foster Wallace commencement speech from several years ago titled This Is Water. The title alone intrigued me, and as I read on, the words that followed really got me thinking too. (You can read it for yourself here.)

Many aspects of the speech struck me, but what resonated most were his words emphasizing that higher education is not just about teaching us how to think, but about empowering us to choose what to think about. In other words, what’s critical is what you decide to focus on. Is it this or that? Because there’s a lot of “this” and “that” out there.