Wallace built to this definition of freedom through a vivid, almost painfully realistic description of a typical adult evening — fighting traffic after work, navigating a crowded supermarket, standing in an interminable checkout line. He showed how the 'default setting' of self-centeredness turns every inconvenience into a personal affront, and then demonstrated that the same situation can be experienced entirely differently if you choose to pay attention. The freedom he described was the opposite of what consumer culture sells: not the freedom to be 'lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms,' but the freedom to escape that kingdom entirely. It was a freedom that required daily discipline and sacrifice — and it was, Wallace acknowledged, 'unimaginably hard.' The speech ended with the two simplest sentences he ever wrote: 'This is water. This is water.' Wallace took his own life three years later, lending his words a tragic weight he could not have intended.