We all have those days when we wake up on the wrong side of our minds, right? Lets take my day, today actually, for example. Just before the alarm clock goes off at 8:30, which is when I choose to wake, my consciousness already sees this coming and before even waking up I am already beginning to feel angry. I really have no idea how I even remember this, but sure enough the alarm clock makes that dreadful noise and I end up punching the alarm clock. Upon waking to what just happened, I realized that I broke the clock. Now, I need to get a new one at some point, which adds an unnecessary reason to be even crankier to my already typical morning crankiness. I then proceed with the usual morning ritual: get up, brush my teeth, shower, put on clothes that feel right, and go downstairs for some grub. There is nothing better to start your day with a bowl Captain Crunch with milk. Luckily, I knew from the day before that I only had one serving left, just enough for my next morning. While pouring the milk, the jug slips out of my hand and onto the bowl with the golden crunchiness, which spills pretty much everything. The clean up was hella’ painful. Way to f*in start my day. As you can conclude, I had a pretty bad rest of the day. It was one of those days where the rain cloud was only following me, maybe that is why it was raining today, sorry world.

            Upon reading and hearing David Foster Wallace’s “Kenyon Commencement Speech”, this made me reflect back on my day. In his speech he makes three points that really stood out to me: choice in which we are able to choose how we react and feel towards anything that happens to us, the fact that we as individuals think we are the center of the universe, which causes “default-setting” actions, and how I agree with his point that there is no such thing as atheism. Although I already believe that there is no point in living without believing in something, his point makes a whole lot of sense.

After reading his speech before leaving campus, on the way home I listened to David’s speech I downloaded off of youtube. When I got home I looked at the clock I broke that morning and just sat in silence for maybe 5 to 10 minutes to reflect on my day. Everything around me throughout the day just made me miserable or indifferent. On the way, there weren’t too many slow drivers, which was great for my mild case of road rage. Coming into my networking class, I find out that we got an extra week extension on the due date for our programs. In my languages and automata class, we also got an extension on our homework; and English class was English class. In reality, I had a pretty good day, but in the “Ivan Universe” I was certainly not.

David really had me going there for a little, but he was right. Just because I had such a terrible morning, my mind slipped into this “default-setting” of having a bad start to my day causes the rest to be bad as well. If there was anything he talked about that really impacted me, it would have to be his idea of how being educated gives us the ability to see the world around us a little differently. The ability to have an open mind about anything allows us to “choose wisely” about how that anything relates back to us. After hearing his grocery store story, he is totally right, in my opinion. We choose the way we feel.

In relation to choices, he talked about how there is no such thing as atheism and how everyone worships something, “The only choice we get is what to worship.” In this time of an ever more advancing society, people may begin to question faith in general, but even then something drives everyone. If they don’t believe in God, then maybe they believe in their job (or something). Anyway, the point being, I could not agree more in what he is saying and again the power of choice comes back into play. We choose what we worship; therefore, “default-settings” naturally form in our own universes. To touch back on being educated, this is when we can control our “default-settings”. Its basically a choice which leads to other choices we have to make, and the education we have is what allows us to make better choices after the previous one is made.

In conclusion, I could not agree more in his speech and his overall topics that stood out to me. How choices we make impact in our lives, our little universe that creates our “default-settings”, and how we all worship something in some shape or form. I never really realized the power of choice. We truly choose pretty much everything around us. If someone does something, either that be towards us or not, we choose the way it will impact us. We are just human, and with that we are not perfect. Sometimes we have to step out of our little universe and be the better person than ourselves, it will only benefit no one else but us.

-On a side note, knowing that he killed himself three years after this speech did not really influence any bias that may come up before reading and listening to his speech. In relation to the “this I believe” essay thinking process, we talked about how perspectives change in time. Couldn’t it be possible that his did too after stopping his medications in some ways than not? I give the man credit for this one, for I agree with what he has said in his Kenyon Speech.