What I Learned from David Foster Wallace: Embodying my Values
I had a lightbulb moment this week. In order to access the person that I want to become, I must define and embody my personal values.
There’s a lot to unpack in these two sentences. One: who is this person I want to become, and two: how does one go about defining personal values.
“Although, of course, you end up becoming yourself.” This is the title of David Lipsky’s book, which takes on the form of an extended interview with David Foster Wallace, author of Infinite Jest. It is also a quote from DFW. I like this because it infers that the momentum of becoming who we are is unstoppable. Every little thing we do accumulates — we “end up becoming”. However, the first word, “although”, implies that a series of conscious decisions can direct the momentum down a certain path. To become a writer, perhaps. A teacher. A missionary. An activist. A murderer. Any of a hundred different identities.
I accept that the momentum of becoming myself is as unchangeable as gravity. What I want to focus on is what goes into the “although”. Because, even if those things don’t lead to the self that I imagine in my head, they will without doubt, accumulate. If for no other reason, I want the person I become to be the product of the factors that I chose, no matter how they react with the factors I don’t.
I want to be a writer. I have for a long time. I have had difficulty with discipline and feeling like I have a story worth reading. My tendency is to get tied up with work or family and use that as an excuse to say why I haven’t been able to manage writing on the side. But frankly it’s B.S. The real reason is that I am afraid of being average, or failing, or even finding out that I can attain success, because I won’t know how to react. This tendency is defined by a fear of committing to the process of being a writer.
…you end up becoming…
Getting in touch with my personal values is how I can get back to the “although”. How I can get back to consciously making decisions that become factors that determine who I ultimately become. In other words, my values will define my “why”. And my “why” will enable the “how”.
Connection & Empathy
It might seem like creativity would be the go-to value. But for me, creativity is the mechanism to exercise and display who we are. Art is the medium through which we can gain connection to others, but it does not create it. Connection and empathy are firstly human.
I consider myself a sensitive and emotionally complex person. I struggle with seeing anything in black and white because, in my world view, few things are.
By way of example, I was recently part of a work event where one of the topics discussed was creating personnel profiles in order to identify common needs among a group. This sounds like an HR “no-no”. It was the business group deciding to generate buckets of characteristics that may define some of the common needs as part of the group, in order to better serve the workforce.
Despite what were certainly well-intentioned efforts to recognize that a one-size-fits most approach is an ineffective way to manage employee needs (not to mention immoral), I couldn’t help but feel that the framework of the exercise fell short of truly working to connect and show empathy toward the workforce. A label is a label, regardless if it’s one or twenty.
The point here is not to target or criticize this approach. It is for me to understand my own values.
To me, empathy is something we exhibit on a personal level. It is a response to another’s individual story. And through the act of showing empathy, the result of personal connection is achieved. This connection is both with the person (relationship) and with their value set (intellectual), and how they go about embodying their value set (spiritual).
I want to be a writer. But I do not want to be a writer that cannot connect with people. Connecting with others in my writing means working on connecting with others in my personal life.
To bring a third value into the fold: community. I sense that for me, community is the accumulation of the outputs yielded by empathy and connection. Or maybe, instead of considering it an a+b=c equation, they feed into one another.
I will certainly end up becoming myself. But what I do to get there is, in part, up to me. My although, is also my why. And getting serious about getting personal with my values will open me to the process — the process of becoming a writer, and, of course, becoming myself.
