This Is Water - David Foster Wallace - wikipedia page + article + audio
covers subjects including
“the difficulty of empathy,”
“the importance of being well adjusted,”
and “the essential lonesomeness of adult life.”
NY Times article:
The real value of a real education
has almost nothing to do with knowledge,
and everything to do with simple awareness;
awareness of what is so real and essential,
so hidden in plain sight all around us,
all the time, that we have
to keep reminding ourselves over and over:
‘This is water.’ ‘This is water.’
It is unimaginably hard to do this,
to stay conscious and alive
in the adult world day in and day out.
Which means yet another grand cliché
turns out to be true:
your education really IS
the job of a lifetime.