Insight article

Friday Stories: What is water?

Here's a very quick but very powerful little parable that comes from David Foster Wallace's 2005 commencement address to the graduating class of Kenyon College in Ohio. As with any good parable, there's lots of room for interpretation:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How's the water?” 

And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”

Nailia Tasseel