You choose how and what to think

David Foster Wallace revealed an intriguing theory in his essay This is Water about learning how to think and the impact on one’s self. Once you have control over your mind, you will be able to adjust thoughts, steer your mentality and develop sympathy to care about other people’s contemplations. Educating your mind to positively change the unconscious frustrations that run your brain’s thinking in dreadful situations is what Wallace considers pure freedom. He brings to light the self-centered outlook we deep down all insensibly abide and how this ‘natural default-setting’ can be controlled once you learn how to think. Wallace thoroughly evolves this thesis by inflicting a real life situation of adultery procedures that triggers the instinctive behavior to regard yourself as the ‘absolute center of the universe, the most vivid and important person in existence.’ At one point in one’s life, most likely referred to as adulthood, the experience of day-to-day routines starts to interfere with the way we view ourselves in comparison to the rest around us; in This is Water a hard-working man awaits his turn at the cashier in a packed supermarket and can’t help but acknowledge his own pettiness. This is the point where a ‘well-adjusted’ individual would activate their emotional intelligence to empathize with the rest of the people in the supermarket who might endure more complex frustrations besides a hungry stomach and a tired body. It is that mental switch which sets your mind free and educates you to impart “attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.’ You can change the way you think and choose to think differently.

In relation to Alice Munro’s short stories, Wallace’s theory communicates a strong parallel to the subject matter of her writing. Munro embraces the significant aspects of day-to-day life and includes emotional intelligence as a way of developing empathy amidst her characters. In turn this can influence the audience to become aware of the essence of emotional intelligence and deliver a positive impact on the way we get to choose how to think. In Free Radicals, Munro develops the character Anita to sympathize with a murderer in order to save herself. She fabricates a story in which she kills “Nita” to compensate the man’s offense and connect to his thoughts conducive to the determination of her subsequent life course.