Your Subject-Object Shift Starter Pack

When speaking to the Kenyon College graduating class of 2005, David Foster Wallace famously opened the commencement with the following parable:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

Since hearing this unforgettable commencement speech titled “This is Water” I’ve wondered what I am swimming around in without awareness. In the Hold the Standard Summit, I reference a concept called the Subject-Object Shift, where we acknowledge that we are subject to things outside of our awareness (like the fish and the water they inhabit) and make them object. 

Everyone reading this is subject to something. 

On some level, part of how we as adults move into higher levels of development is to make more things object that we are currently subject to. Unfortunately, this is not the kind of growth you can gain externally. No, not even this article can give you that. Instead, the transformation that occurs in the subject-object shift will come in the form of disconfirming information. Said differently, you’ll need to have your current view challenged. 

Who in your life can inform you that you’re swimming in water?