Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness, because it's so socially repulsive, but it's pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It is our default-setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: There is no experience you've had that you were not at the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is right there in front of you, or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV, or your monitor, or whatever. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent,real -- you get the idea…. People who can adjust their natural default-setting…are often described as being "well adjusted," which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.
The above is from s speech given by David Foster Wallace to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College. The whole speech used to be found online. Since then, it has been published as a short book called This Is Water, and now only pieces of it are online. More exerts are here plus some audio. This site calls Wallace's speech "one of the most timeless graduation speeches of all time." I think it's a very good speech, and I thought of it this week as I noticed myself falling needlessly into default mode.
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