"...learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master."
-Excerpted from 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address - May 21, 2005 by David Foster Wallace
What an amazing bit of insight from a tortured writer. DFW committed suicide earlier this month. But the fact that he did so doesn't debunk the importance of this in the passage. In life, in our spiritual practice, in everything we strive for, if we don't approach things with the proper mindset, we may find ourselves at a dangerous cross roads.
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