From David Foster Wallace's honest and concrete commencement speech, I gained that the basis of our outlook on life is perspective. This perspective can be both personal or social. Personal perspective, according to Wallace, can range anywhere between how you look at a certain situation  to the fact that you absolutely believe, despite what you may tell yourself, that you are the "center of the universe". Social perspective, however, has more to do with the overall awareness of what is happening around you at every moment. There is always more to a situation than the simple, concrete facts you have planted in your brain because once again you are the "center of the universe". Dictionary.com defines awareness not only as having knowledge of a situation or fact but it defines it as being informed of current developments. The most important term to know of when trying to become aware is current developments. Current, obviously meaning that the situation is happening right now and developments, meaning that the situation is always changing. Therefore, your awareness must always be changing as well. Think of it like you're watching a mystery film. Some world famous CEO millionaire was murdered and the whole movie is the main character and detective trying to figure out who the murderer was. You have in your mind, from the very beginning, who the murderer is because you think all of the facts are laid out in front of you and it's simple. Maybe you think it was someone after his money and riches. Maybe you assume that it was a rival company doing what they have to in order to stay stable in a collapsing economy.  However, as the movie progresses you realize that you are only seeing the situation from the side of the detective who thinks that this millionaire is merely a victim and could do no evil. The film starts to show flashbacks to events that happened prior to the murder and you soon realize that this is a terrible man. He has laundered money for years, and selfishly taken money his employees deserved and put it in his own pocket. He has stolen, he has raped and he has even killed. But the detective still considers him a victim because he is simply unaware. The detective soon catches the murderer and it is an 18 year old girl whom the CEO was sexually assaulting but she was merely acting in self defense. There is no proof that the man was sexually assaulting her and the girl goes to prison for life. Obviously that is a highly exaggerated scenario but even the smallest, most meaningless situations can have aspects to them that you never thought would apply. Situations, circumstances, and most importantly people are always seen from your own perspective and in order to actually be aware, you must rid yourself of your selfish thoughts and be constantly conscious of the ever changing circumstances at hand. 

He chose these ideas as part of a graduation speech so that he can try to open up the eyes of the students graduating to reality and attempt to make them conscious of what is happening around them rather than just go through the motions. Wallace presents himself as someone with a clear, distinct idea between reality and assumed reality. He knows who he is and where his place in the world is and he is extremely confident in his knowledge of his place. Wallace assumes his audience is intelligent because they are graduation from college but also assumes they are extremely naïve about what takes place in the real world.  I agree completely with Wallace’s argument because you can never truly know the circumstances of each and every situation at hand.