This is Cardboard...
A Tribute to David Foster Wallace and lessons from one of the smartest things I’ve ever read.
I sat down to write this Substack the other day and was feeling angry and sorry for myself. Things had built up on me and were weighing me down and I thought I was entitled to get them off my chest, so I started writing. Here is how it started…
I’ve become close friends with my UPS and Fed Ex drivers. I’ve come to know these temporary visitors to my home quite well. The UPS driver’s name is Mark. Mark and I have hit it off over the years particularly because I believe he feels sorry for me. At least I want to believe that he does, and it seems like he does. I've grown to need his sorrow because I am that gloomy, pissed-off guy, who spends most of his waking hours wrestling with the cardboard he and others deliver to my house.
The cardboard comes in different shapes and sizes and always arrives, no matter rain or shine. It reaches its destination every day of the year, weekends and Holidays included. Whether I’m on my lawn, on the front stoop, in my driveway or in my garage - I’m wrestling with it each and every day and yet he shows up to deliver more!
When I say wrestling with it, what I mean is that there is so much of it, that it doesn’t matter what I do to try to minimize it, shrink it, or otherwise make it go away. It just grows all over me.
Therefore, what I am trying to tell you, is that I spend an exorbitant amount of time carrying it, sorting it, ripping at it, opening it, closing it, cutting it, spraying it with water, stomping on it, kicking it, and sometimes folding it. I basically wrestle with it... what seems to me to be all day and every day of my life.
My wife asks me not to.
The other day, instead of greeting Mark with my typical joke of making a makeshift BB Gun out of my fingers and pointing my hand “gun” at his tires, I told Mark that I was going to cry, and I meant it. Mark quickly exited his seemingly unsafe extra-large door opening on the driver's side of his truck and offered me his brown uniformed shoulder to cry on…
He could see that the barrage of box trucks and the sheer volume of packages, that had hit me on this otherwise fine spring Sunday morning, had finally broken my spirit.
But here is the thing, It wasn’t the packages themselves that was bringing me such sadness; it was the thought of my wife and I “fighting” over my handling of the cardboard that really had me down.
We had become totally at odds with each other, about the many things the packages represented, and we had lost the ability to take a measurement of the other side's perspective.
For the last few years, I would never let my wife catch me yelling at the boxes. In fact, I always tried to smile through the situation. But it was those darn peanuts that finally drove me over the edge. Those little Styrofoam air-filled fillers come in the thousands regardless of the package size and escape with the slightest mishandling. They float around your head and never land…!!&$@. It was during one of these escaped peanut episodes when I finally snapped. I had become totally enraged at my wife for her buying all this “needless crap” and making us “broke”!
At that moment in time, it was all about Me. It was also at that moment, (I wiped away my tears from Mark’s company-issued polyester shirt) a little book that I keep by my bedside came into my mind, and I thought to myself, “Glenn, this is Water”.
“This is Water” is an adaptation of a commencement speech Mr. Wallace gave at Kenyon College in 2005. His speech was remarkable in many ways. It provides evidence of how we might not only save ourselves but also the world we live in. In just a few short pages (the book is 48 pages, and the audiobook is only 24 minutes long) Mr. Wallace explores how and why we might approach our day-to-day lives with the ability of putting ourselves in other people's shoes.
It’s about how and why to gain perspective of the type that really matters.
Without sounding preachy or even talking about morality, he makes the case that our largest flaw as humans is to gradually make everything about ourselves. He makes the case that seeing the world through the prism of self is our default, and he counters that our ability to learn to choose to be aware of this flaw and to adjust it is why there is such a thing called a “well-adjusted” person. The adjustment he speaks of, this awareness, is the most important choice we have to make in life; to be a little less self-assured, a little less arrogant and to not suffer the victim.
Check out his book: This Is Water
David Foster Wallace committed suicide in 2008. He leaves us a very powerful legacy. His words can help us to avoid living with perpetual frustration, anger, and vengeance. How to develop a mindset to not become the victim to not be the person who is always complaining about what you lack or what others might have. He offers the type of deep wisdom and profound perspective that would cause me to apologize to my wife. The type of perspective that would allow me to understand my nature about such things as packages and to be a little less self-assured in my judgment of the circumstances. The facts are that my wife buys these packages because she wants to make our home nice for me and my kids. Inside all these boxes are mostly household things such as soap, bath salts, cleaning supplies, and bed linens. All things intended to keep our home safe and cozy so that we will all stay as long as possible. So, there you have it - Brooke - bring on the next round of packages. Even those darn peanuts!
I will look forward to the next round of wrestling and will not grunt in anger. In fact, I will put a smile on my face the next time I see Mark and that ugly brown truck of his. Oh wait a minute ... he is here now … Haha just kidding :)
In closing, all jokes aside, the next time I bust out the garden hose to weaken the cardboard you buy, I am going to just count my blessings that I have the hose and water to do so. I will also smile thinking about what a remarkable person David Foster Wallace is. May god bless his soul and may he rest in peace for his contribution to humanity. If we were able to get his lessons into the hearts and minds of our future leaders, this world would become a much better place quickly.
PS. I am also going to choose to take solace in that we are surrounded by many wonderful and brilliant people like him. I hope you enjoyed this article. Please give me your feedback. Thank you.
In a world that often encourages self-centeredness David Foster Wallace powerfully reminds us the dangers of living with such a mindset and how limiting it may be! Great article.