But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very... See more

Most of us spend most of our lives unaware of aliveness. We drift blindly through life like the confused fish in David Foster Wallace’s parable:

How’s the water today? says one fish.

Says the other: What the hell is water?

“The most obvious, important realities,” explains Wallace, “are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.”