What could one expect from a commencement speech? Perhaps a short speech about the importance of education, or a pretentious child-like poem to contrast with the formal institution it takes place in. Maybe it would be useful to give a speech that acts as a handbook on “making it to 30, or maybe even 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head.” As crass as it sounds, some people may want to know how to attempt that challenging feat, and David Foster Wallace delivered a commencement speech that gave them the know-how to try. The speech is about attempting to beat down one’s dissatisfactions by a change of perspective, and also compares this dissatisfaction to a form of worship to ideals. However, the speech demonizes with worship more …show more content…
Dissatisfaction, however, is the root cause of forcing people to better themselves in an area. The fundamental ida in Wallace’s essay is to try to stray away from this frustration, but there is a limit to where his advice works; it only works if one can shift his or her perspective. Not all issues and frustrations in one’s life have the element of some other entity stalling one’s time or efforts. On the contrary, the deepest conflicts of people (especially in the first-world) are ones within themselves. A vast majority of these conflicts can be simplified down to a mere dissatisfaction with one’s own traits. In Wallace’s essay, he describes the yearning of power to the dissatisfaction of one’s own weakness, the want of intelligence versus the shallowness of one’s mind, and the lust for beauty contrasting with the capra visage one may own. Jealousy is not an exception either, because it is these dissatisfactions but applied to what another individual has. People have an excess time to ponder and wallow within their own dissatisfaction that, one way or another, they are forced to act upon