This is Water by David Foster Wallace

I recently read an essay by David Foster Wallace titled "This is Water".  Wallace committed suicide last year, hanging by the neck from a closet hanger for his wife to find.  His essay is an attempt to provide meaning to life, an exhortation to crack out of the eggshell of selfishness inherent to our nature. By striving to see the world from the viewpoint of the other and instilling the other with grace and virtue we can live more honorably and be happy.

One sample line:

"It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars - compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things."

Which is the best part of being a visionary - the ability to see the infinite in the mundane.  Like Tennyson's poem 'Flower in the crannied wall'

Flower in the crannied wall

I pluck you out, root and all

And if should know you, all in all

I'd know what God and man is

Which is ennobling and inspiring and makes one want to tear off their pajamas and run wild through the streets.  For a few minutes at least.  And then you stop and feel the neighbors stare and walk quietly back into your house and lock the door.

Pray that we can keep that perspective in memory, close at hand.  To keep closed the door of suicide - which is really a most selfish act.