You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster WallaceRead
What teachers and the administration in that era never seemed to see was that the mental work of what they called daydreaming often required more effort and concentration than it would have taken simply to listen in class. Laziness is not the issue. It is just not the work dictated by the administration.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Daydreaming can be more mentally demanding than listening in class.
In this quote, David Foster Wallace highlights the complexity of daydreaming, suggesting that it often involves deep thought and creativity. He critiques the educational system for misunderstanding the mental engagement required for such imagination, implying that the structure of traditional learning overlooks the value of creative thought processes.
Themes
DaydreamingEducationCreativityMental EffortConcentration
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on the importance of creativity in education, one might reference this quote.
More from David Foster Wallace
All quotes →Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.
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It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most 'familiarity' is meditated and delusive.
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Under fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff all writers and readers share and respond to, feel.
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Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.
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Bliss - a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious - lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.
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