This Is Water: ‘Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life’ is an essay by David Foster Wallace. This essay covers subjects including the difficulty of empathy, the importance of being well adjusted, and the essential lonesomeness of adult life.

David Foster Wallace’s speech suggests that the overall purpose of higher education is to be able to consciously choose how to perceive others, think about meaning, and act appropriately in everyday life. He argues that the true freedom acquired through education is the ability to be adjusted, conscious, and sympathetic.

David Foster Wallace struggled with drug and alcohol addiction, depression, suicide attempts, institutionalization, and at times inappropriate sexual behavior. He was reported to have slept with some of his female students while teaching at university and sometimes exhibited stalking-like obsessive behavior when enamored of a woman.

David Foster Wallace committed suicide on September 12, 2008, at age 46. Wallace’s father reported in an interview that his son had suffered from depression for more than 20 years and that antidepressant medication had allowed him to be productive. David Foster Wallace went into the garage, wrote a two-page note, and arranged part of the manuscript for The Pale King before hanging himself from a patio rafter.