Analysis Of Annie Dillard's This Is Water

The world is composed of many things that people come across and interact with in their day to day lives. There are challenges and obstacles that have to be dealt with to make life bearable. As a result, people are constantly looking for the best things that can help them solve their problems. They always tend to look far beyond where they are or other their immediate surroundings in search for complex solutions. However, their solutions could be what is just next to them and that which they ignore. This article analyses two essays one which is a speech by David Foster Wallace and the other one,which is an essay by Annie Dillard. The two essays explain how people miss important things for not looking around them.
This is Water by David Foster
As the big fish, he tries to explain to the young fish what water really is. He goes on to state that the obvious and the most important realities in life are the ones that are hard to see. For instance, when the big fish stood to ask the small fish what water is, the small fish had no idea of water, yet they were swimming in it (Wallace, 2009). They could not see the water yet it is the most obvious and most important thing for them. Therefore, people only need to choose the right things to think about and they will be able to see the obvious things that are more important to
She explains that there are many important things around that people may never notice because they are busy with their affairs (Dillard, 2011). The world is full of unwrapped gifts as well as free surprises yet people may never see them because they do not care to find them. She starts by giving a short story about how she used to hide pennies when she was young and when she grew up and learnt how to write, she labeled the path along where she hid the gifts with arrows leading to the places but no one would notice them (Dillard, 2011). “When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. It was a curious compulsion; sadly, I’ve never been seized by it since. For some reason I always “hid” the penny along the same stretch of sidewalk up the street. I would cradle it at the roots of a sycamore, say, or in a hole left by a chipped-off piece of sidewalk. Then I would take a piece of chalk, and, starting at either end of the block, draw huge arrows leading up to the penny from both directions. After I learned to write I labeled the arrows: SURPRISE AHEAD or MONEY THIS WAY” (Dillard