This is Water & stone #1

there it is. 2012. still feels strange to type it: 2012. 2012.

after sunrise i revisited an essay i read last year for new year. back then, i folded into the bookshelf, to return to: the T-shaped, thought-provoking commencement speach of David Foster Wallace: This is Water. it included the lines below that connect to the stones idea and on another returning theme of these days: worship.

But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.
Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it.
This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.
Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.
here's the full essay online: This is Water.

--

and with 2012, the river of stones is now on, this joined exercise of paying attention to the everyday. the first entry came easy, right in the morning, before sunrise: Neujahr.