In a graduation speech at Kenyon College, the American author David Foster Wallace tells the following familiar 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?”

He tells the graduating seniors that this story illustrates how the most obvious truths are often the hardest to see. There are so many things that we take for granted, just assuming that, well, since that is what I’ve always heard, it must be the way things are. Or, because so-and-so said it, it must be true. Thousands of years ago, Rabbi Eliezer advised and cautioned: “warm yourself before the fire of the wise…but beware of being singed by their glowing coals.” (Pirkei Avot 2:10) Even as we seek wisdom, the rabbi warns, we shouldn’t be non-skeptical consumers of that knowledge.

As you swim in the water of your personal truths, always be a skeptic. Ask questions, challenge assumptions, seek the perceptions of those who may see the water very differently than you do!

— Rabbi Ron Stern