Apparently, empathy and enlightenment can be found right at the check-out counter. So can boredom and frustration. Freedom is realizing I have the choice.
This short film brings to life extracts from David Foster Wallace's commencement address to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College. Subsequently published as This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life. You can read the full speech here.
Finding tranquility and compassion in moments of the mundane doesn't mean we have to accept this world as it is, however. We can still work to make the world a better place. We can still resist the rat race and imagine another way for the world to be. But in our every day lives, while we're working on making that happen, our experience of the day-to-day drudgery of this world is up to us. We don't have to go with the flow - we don't have to go through the motions of the check-out line and rush-hour traffic the way others do with deadened faces.
We can act spontaneously, with a smile and an open heart.
We can live without dead time. - Films For Action