Every week on The Wisdom Daily, we bring you our favorite reads from sources around the web. Today’s list of intriguing essays, Q&A pieces and blog posts cover Ava DuVernay’s smart approach to sharing her work, the storytelling trend dubbed “quit lit,” the extreme scrutiny of others’ bodies, the grief of a sudden loss, the integrity it takes to apologize… and more. Whatever’s transpiring in your life, may you find the words of wisdom you need.
1. Audience Participation
“The consumer is deciding what they want to see and when and how, and filmmakers are more aware and accepting of the fact that success is not predicated on your movie showing in a traditional theater for a certain amount of time.”
– Ava DuVernay, on innovating a new film distribution model (Los Angeles Times)
2. We’re Outta Here
“Quitting itself has in some ways become a decidedly active thing, and the subject of contemplation across the culture… It is a boycott of one. But, whether it involves academia or gluten or yoga pants, it is generally made in the hope that, on the Internet, the boycott can change minds and gather voices, becoming more collective and communal.”
– Megan Garber, “The Rise of Quit-Lit” (The Atlantic)
3. Every Body Knows
“To love yourself without seeming to experience the required effort and pain that are publicly celebrated as the means to a picture-perfect body means cheating. A good body is proof of a good person just as a bad body…is proof of a bad person. This logic falls apart when we see that love does not need to follow gruelling effort, and that we can love ourselves as we are.”
– Sarah Marshall, “Why Fat-Shaming Persists” (Elle.com)
4. Resting in Peace, Living in Life
“A year passed… I slowly started riding the ambulance again… When I looked at the worried faces of a patient’s family members, I stopped looking for my face there. Each person’s fear, grief and loss is unique… I reminded myself I had to entitle people to their own experience, and that I could not analogize their situation to mine. I learned I could risk showing compassion.”
– Deana Cairo, “Signs of Life” (Modern Loss)
?5. Sincerely Sorry
“Owning an apology is one of the more powerful relationship-building behaviors you can have. And I should clarify here, I’m not talking about the flippant apology for the sake of apologizing or a canned public relations statement. I’m getting at a genuine, heartfelt, and meaningful apology when you realized you made a mistake.”
– Patrick Sallee, “When Was the Last Time You Apologized?” (The Good Men Project)
6. Attitude Adjustment
“If we can go from feeding our six-month-old meat as a first food to being pure vegetarian and being horrified by the idea, why can we not duplicate that process to jettison old practices which are oppressive and derogatory to sections of the community? What stops us from adopting a new mindset, a new outlook, squarely within the tradition?”
– Rohini Bakshi, “The Domestic Rituals of Hinduism” (India Today)
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Here at The Wisdom Daily (TWD), we feature spiritual insights on daily life, designed to help improve and enhance our relationships with ourselves, our families and the world around us.