From the article:

I’m a big David Foster Wallace fan. His 2005 commencement speech will go down as one of the best ever.

If you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently … You get to decide what has meaning and what doesn’t.

He’s also a big proponent of thinking.

I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.