'This is water, this is water'

This is water. Picture: YouTube Source: news.com.au

MILLIONS of people are sharing a new video adaptation of late author David Foster Wallace's "This is water" speech.

The 2005 college commencement speech has been held up as a poignant meditation on the [capital T] true value of education, particularly since his death in 2008.

Wallace, who famously wrote the 1996 novel Infinite Jest, addressed the senior students of Kenyon College and encouraged them to choose to engage in conscious thought in the face of the banality and frustration of the daily grind in adult life.

The theme of the speech is drawn from a short allegory read out at the beginning about two young fish who swim past an older fish. The older fish says: "morning boys. How's the water?"

The two younger fish swim in on silence until one says to the other: "what the hell is water?"

Wallace's speech sets the soundtrack to a slick nine-minute video, which explores the author’s idea that "the most obvious and important realities are often the hardest to see and talk about".

Do you really know the meaning of day in, day out?

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