Sunday Supplement #79 (November 13th, 2022)
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.
I hope you take something away from these recommendations that enriches your week ahead!
Quote of the Week:
“Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.”
– Aldous Huxley
Book of the Week:
Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
The Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez wrote many acclaimed works and has received much recognition for his contribution to literature and journalism.
Love in the Time of Cholera is one of Márquez’s better-known novels and focuses on two lovers over five decades, from the 1880s to the 1930s.
The story focuses mainly on an unnamed port city in Colombia and follows the lives of Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza.
They both fell in love when they were young, but Fermina eventually chose to marry a wealthy, upper-class doctor with some pressure from her family. Fifty years later, after Fermina’s husband’s death, Florentino declares his love again.
Love in the Time of Cholera has much depth in its pages. Many themes around love and aging are beautifully explored and well worth checking out.
Movie of the Week:
Akira Kurosawa received an Honorary Award from the Academy in 1990 for cinematic accomplishments that inspired, delighted, enriched, and entertained worldwide audiences and influenced filmmakers throughout the world.
I featured Kurosawa’s Yojimbo in Sunday Supplement #70, and in that post, I also mentioned his film Seven Samurai.
Seven Samurai tells the story of a poor village under attack recruiting seven unemployed samurai to defend the people and the town.
Kurosawa’s writing and directing, combined with a legendary performance by Toshirô Mifune, helped create a film that will forever be a classic.
The film has been remade multiple times for Western audiences, including twice as The Magnificent Seven, but the original shouldn’t be overlooked.
Brainfood of the Week:
Wisdom | The School of Life
This video starts with The School of Life describing wisdom not as a stable state but as an aspiration or goal worth striving for.
They state that there are many strands woven into wisdom. Realism is one, gratitude another, politeness, humor, and self-acceptance are some others.
The video breaks down each thread it mentions and discusses how each attribute helps contribute to wisdom.
In breaking down realism, they explain how knowing something might be difficult allows for acceptance and a calm demeanor when tackling challenging tasks.
There is much more in the full video, and I highly recommend giving it a watch. If you enjoy it, I’ve featured The School of Life in a few previous Sunday Supplements.
Closing Spiritual Passage:
“Allah does not burden a soul beyond that it can bear.”
– Surah Al-Baqara 2:286
This passage from the Quran reminds me of how we can feel overwhelmed at various points in our lives, but we always seem to make it through those times.
These difficult moments can seem like burdens, but the more time passes, the more I can see the lessons in the experiences.
I’ve mentioned it before in previous Sunday Supplements, but many passages from spiritual texts could often be swapped without anyone’s notice.
This Quran passage seems to me like a universal message that wouldn’t be out of place in the Bible, the Vedas, or any Buddhist texts.
Know that any challenge in your life is one you can handle, and have a blessed week ahead!