The most famous college commencement speeches tend to be filled with witty inspiration and great insight into the success that is to come for the wide-eyed graduates in the audience.
Writer David Foster Wallace’s speech to the Kenyon College class of 2005 is a sobering departure from this standard.
It wasn’t so much a lecture, but a warning against living life on auto-pilot. Or, as he puts it:
“How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone – day in and day out.”
After they finished laughing, we can only hope that Wallace’s advice helped steer these students clear of depression on their path to greatness, and helps you on yours.
David Foster Wallace, for all his insight, was not so fortunate. He committed suicide in 2008 after fighting depression for over 20 years.