"[[David Foster Wallace|Wallace]] gives the students what is basically a brutal description of adult life, in which you find yourself at the “hideously, fluorescently lit” grocery store full of annoying people after a long day of work and a horrible traffic jam. **In that moment, you have a choice of how to perceive the situation and the people in it. As it turns out, that choice is basically one of attention: if I don’t make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I’m going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to food-shop, because my natural default-setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home, and it’s going to seem, for all the world, like everybody else is just in my way, and who are all these people in my way?** "This makes room for the possibility, in [[David Foster Wallace|Wallace]]’s examples, **that the guy in the Hummer who just cut you off is maybe trying to rush a child to the hospital**—“and he’s in a way bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am—it is actually I who am in his way.” Or that the woman in front of you in line who just screamed at you is maybe not usually like this; maybe she’s going through a rough time." ([Location 2300](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07RHWKD7N&location=2300)) --- **Tags** -- [[quotes]], [[attention]], [[inattentional-blindness]], [[monkey-business-test]], [[context]], [[framing]], [[character]] **Source** -- [[20251230081807 - B - How to Do Nothing]] **See Also** -- [[202308180913 — AtN — You have the ability to reframe scenarios to protect your mental health]]