When reading both "This is Water" and the "Nobel Lecture" I found key similarities in the two texts. Both texts mention that we as human beings get to decide what we choose to do with our lives nobody makes that choice for us. Both texts also mention how we as humans can either picture things that happen to us as being negative or positive. The difference between the two texts would be the audience that these texts are being said to. While one was a commencement speech for a graduating class the other was meant to be a message for African Americans.
In "This is Water" Wallace states " The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it." And in Morrison's "Nobel Lecture" she states " Whether it is to stay alive, it is your decision. Whatever the case, it is your responsibility." Both of these text mention how it is our choice, our right to choose what we does and doesn't happen to us in our lives. Life is a choice and our life is what we make of it. Another similarity is how they both mention examples where we as humans can see things as being negative or positive. For instance in "This is Water" Wallace mentions many scenarios that we have all been in at one point or another. We at first hand can see a line of people in front of us as being in our way and annoying. In the "Nobel Lecture" the blind woman knows what the intention of the children are yet she is untouched by what the children seek to do. We can either let what other people do whether it be known or unknown to us affect us or just let it go.
Both Wallace and Morrison's texts held meaning but the difference was who the texts were targeted at. Wallace gave his speech as a commencement speech for a graduating class he may have just told it to that class but he did not mean it just to hit one race. As with Morrison's her speech was mainly meant to be a beacon to that of African Americans or as seen as in my opinion.
In conclusion both texts hit upon main points that we as humans are all guilty of doing. We may not know that we are doing them but what matters most is how we change what we have done to make what we do in the future better.
Your view on the two texts and how they focus on the choices we make really spoke to me. I agree with you that Wallace's passage was about perception and how we all have a choice on how we make it through our day, but i feel like Morrison's point was that we have a responsibility to language. At the end the children are begging for insight on this world they know so little about and the blind woman answers "I trust you now. I trust you with the bird that is not in your hands because you have truly caught it. Look. How lovely it is, this thing we have done together." I think she was talking about the importance of language and how it binds us together as a species. we are able to tell stories to each other and convey messages within them.
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