This is Water- David Foster Wallace

In his essay 'This is Water' David Foster Wallace suggests that true freedom acquired through education is the ability to be adjusted, conscious, and sympathetic. He continues to progress this thesis by stating that "Learning how to think" is actually a way in which we control how we think and what we think. He implies that being conscious and having awareness helps us as humans make sense and meaning of different situations and pay attention from experiences. For instance in the video we see people irritated at the woman who's taking too long at the cashier yet no one there knows what she's been through or what’s causing her all these troubles. He asserts the concept that we as humans focus on ourselves as individuals and view the world to be revolving around us and hence don't see or pay attention to what’s happening front of us. He discusses out default- setting and how in every experience we've had we've been the center of it and thereby fail to understand other people's experiences and their emotion and thought process. We go along thinking that our immediate needs and feelings are the most import thing and should be addressed as a priority.  To be able not to do so we must acquire knowledge and intellect in order to start understand and seeing different perspectives. 

David Foster Wallace also goes on to discuss how freedom involves different matters such as attention, awareness, discipline, effort and truly caring about others. this is real freedom and once we have acquired such freedom then we are able to understand the world we live in and understand the way others work and be conscious of others.

Once we have a clearer understanding of real freedom and we truly relate to the proper kind of freedom then we start develop real emotional intelligence in a sense that we have more awareness and are more conscious to other people’s problems and situations. We start to grow empathy for people other than ourselves which contributes to our mental advancements. We need to be able to shut off our default setting and see beyond ourselves. Literature like many other works as a way in which we can place ourselves in other peoples shoes and see what they experience and feel empathy for the life and situations. Literature has the capability to teach us emotional understanding and intelligence through the deeper sense of empathy that it allows us to experience. It explores different themes which help us have a better understanding of the societal norms we live and appreciate the struggles of other people around us. Like David Wallace states, we need to adjust our minds in a from in which we are able to approach different matters with a different mindset which further also further establishes the work of literature and its aims.