This Is Water

It's that time of year when many of us are interacting with graduation ceremonies and speeches, graduates, and the general celebration of another school year coming to a close.  Even if we aren't, we might find the onset of summer opening us like groundhogs emerging from our winter-hole homes, like tulip bulbs pushing hopefully, up and away from the underground.  Or, we might not feel this way at all.

Personally, I'm finding the past few weeks to feel unbelievably heavy.  I want to hurry up with my work so I can not work.  I want the sun to stay out and the cold wind to go away.  I want to run away from all things winter, to explode into summer with some new sense of determination and excitement.  I get annoyed easily that my life isn't suddenly flower-filled.  I want the grass to be greener and the tulips in my front yard to hurry up and bloom already.  I am tired of waiting for summer.

As I logged on to my computer this morning to begin grading yet another batch in the unending pile of final student essays, I found myself bumming around online instead - no surprise there.  I hope some of you have heard/read David Foster Wallace's 2005 graduation speech at Kenyon College. (If you haven't, you can read the whole thing here.)  What emerged from my seeming-procrastination was this: A company called The Glossary has condensed Wallace's graduation speech and made it into a 10 minute video.  Watching it, I found the message to align with much of what we have been studying in our Ayruvedic group. Watching it, I found the message to be a needed reminder.  This time of year, this time of transition, this time of not-yet-summer-but-almost, is the time I need these kinds of reminders the most. My work matters.  My students (most of them, anyway) are learning.  This life is a shared experience, and when I widen my perspective, I find compassion more easily -- for myself, for the small tulip buds, for the wild wind and clouds, for all the waiting we must do. I share it with hopes that it resonates for you, too.

THIS IS WATER - By David Foster Wallace from The Glossary on Vimeo.