Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” In David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech at Kenyon College, he says that the real purpose of education isn’t to instill us with the capacity to think—something we all possess—but rather, to help us maintain constant awareness that we have the choice of what to think about. Have you ever thought about yourself as having a choice over what you think about? Or, do you feel that you do not have a choice in what to think about or pay attention to?

This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.