David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace would have been 51 yesterday.
So often we talk about how freedom empowers us — less often, we think about the obligations freedom conveys.
I love this quote by Wallace:
The really important kind of freedom involves 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.
David Foster Wallace
Kenyon College Commencement Speech, April 21, 2005
David Foster Wallace died by his own hand after battling depression his entire adult life.