Sunday Supplement #143 (February 4th, 2024)
Below is another Sunday Supplement with a quote worth sharing, a book worth reading, a movie worth watching, brainfood worth consuming, and a spiritual passage worth pondering.
Please take something away from these recommendations that enriches your week ahead!
Quote of the Week:
“Playing professional sports, it’s important to eat healthy and take care of your body. In the offseason, rest is really important to me.”
– Troy Polamalu
Book of the Week:
Tao Te Ching – Lao Tzu (Ursula K. Le Guin)
Lao Tzu was a philosopher of Ancient China and is considered by some the founder of Taoism. The Tao Te Ching is a central Taoist text.
Ursula K. Le Guin studied the Tao Te Ching for over forty years. She consulted the literal translations and worked with Chinese scholars for her translation.
Le Guin’s version has wonderful footnotes of her thoughts on various verses. I’m a huge fan of the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author and featured her in Sunday Supplement #44.
In verse form, the Tao Te Ching describes the ideal existence, the Tao, the Way. The poems of the text have much beauty and depth.
Though the text is relatively short, I took my time reading it. I found myself pondering the contents of a poem for a while, sometimes putting the book down to let the verse sink in.
Movie of the Week:
The 2015 biographical sports drama Concussion stars Will Smith as Bennet Omalu, a forensic pathologist who goes up against the NFL for trying to suppress his research.
Omalu’s work focuses on chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) brain degeneration suffered by professional American football players.
Peter Landesman wrote and directed the film based on the exposé “Game Brain” published in GQ magazine by Jeanne Marie Laskas.
Concussion didn’t get the best reviews or make the most money at the box office, but I thought it was a story worth portraying on the screen and that there was much to appreciate.
Brainfood of the Week:
Workaholics and the Importance of Rest | Jordan B. Peterson
I’ve featured Jordan Peterson in a couple of previous Sunday Supplements with the caveat that I don’t agree with everything he says, but his lectures are worth a listen.
Peterson is a clinical psychologist and author of bestselling self-help books and more than one hundred scientific papers.
In this clip, Peterson discusses the necessity of rest. He starts by quoting the Bible’s passage on God’s creation of the world and his resting on the seventh day.
He then discusses the utility of rest. The obvious is not burning yourself out so you can’t get back to work for an extended period. The other aspect I thought interesting was rest gives you a chance to reflect.
Give the video a watch if it piques your interest. You can take away what is useful to you and disregard the rest.
Closing Spiritual Passage:
“There is no possibility of one’s becoming a yogi if one eats too much or eats too little, sleeps too much or does not sleep enough.”
– Bhagavad Gita 6:16
I think this Bhagavad Gita verse is an interesting insight into the necessity of moderation in our day-to-day lives.
A yogi is a practitioner of Yoga— not solely the physical exercise popular in Western culture, but rather an encompassing group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines that aim to still the mind.
Depending on the circumstances, an occasional excess or deprivation seems perfectly reasonable to me.
However, the necessity of regular sleep and a steady diet seems obvious, but it’s something we can often ignore.
Make sure you’re resting appropriately, and have a blessed week ahead!