How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Rainn Wilson
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A decade after “The Office” ended, is Rainn Wilson simply sitting back and basking in the afterglow of his nine-season run as survivalist salesman Dwight Schrute? False.
He’s been busy writing, acting, podcasting, producing, directing, co-founding a media company and, through all of it, pondering life’s big questions. His third book, “Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution,” which will be released April 25, explores how spirituality — not to be confused or interchanged with organized religion — can be fulfilling in ways and places you least expect. (In the first chapter, Wilson makes the argument that “Star Trek” metaphorically tackled the 1960s' greatest societal challenges from the point of view of an enlightened human race.)
He also produced and is the host of a new Peacock docuseries premiering in May called “Rainn Wilson and the Geography of Bliss,” where he traveled the world to learn about what makes people happy. Wilson infuses many of his own delights into his Sundays, which usually begin at his home near Oxnard with his wife, writer Holiday Reinhorn. Here’s how they’d spend the perfect day.
7:30 a.m.: Get some extra Zzzs
Seven-thirty is “sleeping in” for me. I'm usually up at 6:30 or 7. So if I'm able to sleep until 7:30, I feel like a million bucks.
8:15 a.m.: Meditate
I'll have a little green tea and sit on my meditation bench under a tree for 20 minutes. My daily meditation practice is very simple: I’ll clear my mind and find some stillness. It’s akin to when your computer's acting all funky. You just reboot it, and things clear up and run smoother. That's kind of what a meditation practice is. It doesn't make me a saint by any means. I have anxiety and a little bit of ADHD, and it allows me to reset my sails to head in the right direction.
8:45 a.m.: Tend to the animals
Then I will help my wife feed our pigs and our peacock. We go down to our little pig area, and I help her make the pig mush. And the peacock has a very particular diet of blueberries and worms. I’ll take that down to her and clean up some pig poop, although pigs are very clean and they only poop in little piles in the corners.
9:15 a.m.: Have one of the greatest doughnuts on earth
I’ll go to Rolling Pin Donuts in Camarillo. It’s a shack — about 15 feet by 20 feet. And truly, like, along with Voodoo Doughnuts, they have some of the greatest doughnuts that you'll absolutely ever experience. It's next-level. You need to trust me on this. It's like having sushi at Nobu and you’re like, "Wait, this isn’t sushi. It’s beyond sushi." I’ll usually get something with matcha on it.
10:30 a.m.: Be in nature
If I’m going into L.A., one place I like to stop by is the Self-Realization Fellowship. There’s one right off the 101 in Hollywood. You can park for free and wander the grounds. And it's a great place to pray, meditate and commune with nature. It was started by this guru Yogananda a long time ago. I love the contradiction of this place — it’s this oasis of peace, like, in the mecca of fame and the pursuit of fame and addiction and partying.
Read more: 12 places to find solace for your soul in Los Angeles
11:30 a.m.: Take a coffee break
I’ll make a pit stop at this small coffee chain called La Monarca. It's kind of a SoCal-Mexican blend. They have the best coffee, but they also have Mexican hot chocolate there. And it's absolutely fantastic.
Noon: Decide what to eat
In the Bahá’í faith, they use the metaphor of a garden. A garden is more beautiful the more diverse it is. You don't want a garden of all the same flower. It also helps the health of the soil to diversify your crops and fields and whatnot. So you know, one thing I love about Los Angeles is the incredible diversity, and there’s no place where that’s better exemplified than Grand Central Market. Yes, it's gotten a lot more commercialized since I landed in Los Angeles 23 years ago, when it was really a free-for-all and it felt like more of a market. But there are still vestiges of that. There’s banh mi next to pupusas next to Thai street noodles next to roast beef au jus sandwiches. The diversity of food there and in all of downtown is really exceptional, and to me, that’s a beautiful illumination of the human spirit.
For my wife and I, one of our first trips we took together in our couple-ship in the early ’90s was to El Salvador. And so when we’re at Grand Central Market, we love to have pupusas, which is, I think, one of the least appreciated foods of Los Angeles.
2 p.m.: See a show
My wife and I try to go to shows whenever we can at the Taper or the Ahmanson. The last show we saw was about the Lehman brothers. It was a Broadway tour. I’ll go to a matinee on a Sunday.
I love theater. I did 10 years of theater in New York before I came out to Los Angeles. And people don't understand that there's really some great, great theater in Los Angeles. And it's not something you just see when you’re waiting to take a trip to New York. So I like to support Los Angeles theater.
5 p.m. Peruse the stacks
We’ll go to the Last Bookstore downtown, which is one of the world's great bookstores, and it's just a really fun one to get lost in. I just love to look through the used books.
I definitely will go to the spirituality and religion section, but that gets very tricky because those books are often lumped in with self-help books, which I'm not necessarily a huge fan of, unless they're really, really smart.
6 p.m.: Get back for Sunday night TV
I’ll head back home because on Sunday nights, HBO usually releases some really good shows. On our way back, I’ll have some ramen delivered. I’ll time it out perfectly like, OK, I know it's going to take 47 minutes from the beginning to end. So when I’m 47 minutes away from home, I’ll order ramen, so there's fresh steaming ramen waiting at my house when I watch television. Cagami Ramen in Camarillo is really good.
“Succession” is one of my favorite shows of all time. I still subscribe to that “must-see TV” kind of thing. Like, “Oh, the new show is coming out on this night? I need to drop everything and see it.” I'm still wired that way.
10 p.m.: Read
I try to leave some time to read. Reading is very important. As a middle-aged man, I’m making sure I'm in bed around 10 or 10:30 so that I can have a good half an hour to read. And right now, I've just started “The Greatness Mindset” by Lewis Howes, which is a really cool book about very specific micro-choices you can make to maximize who you are.
10:30 p.m.: Connect with my faith
Before I go to bed, I try and read just a little quote from the Bahá’í faith. I get this Bahá’í quote of the day sent to my inbox. Here’s one from 'Abdu'l-Bahá:
“I desire for you all that you will have this great assistance and partake of this great bounty, and that in spirit and heart you will strive and endeavor until the world of war become the world of peace; the world of darkness the world of light …”
I think about this as this war rages on in Ukraine and innocent people die every day. We need a spiritual transformation of the world. We need to change people's hearts in order to enact lasting change.
So a perfect day would involve food, contemplation and taking in art. It would be a full, rich and kind of exhausting day, frankly.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
