BONUS | An Important Message About Grace & Forgiveness

0:05Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2 ,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit dailystoic.com.

0:56Hey, everyone. Welcome to a bonus episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I hope you're having a good Thanksgiving. I know I'm grateful to get to do this podcast, to have you listening. so I wanted to throw something together for you. Last year when I was in Australia doing that speaking tour, I was able to squeeze in a couple podcast interviews while I was there and one of them was with one of my favorite people, Julia Baird. By the way, I'm going to be on another speaking tour here like very shortly. I'm going to be in Seattle on the 3rd of December and then I'm going to be in Phoenix and San Diego in February and grab all that at dailystoiclive.com But I was able to speak with Julia Baird.

1:37And Julia is this Australian journalist, broadcaster, and author. I first found her when I read her book, Queen Victoria, Biography of Queen Victoria, which I used a lot when I was writing Stillness. Then she wrote this other book called Phosphorescence, which I really liked. And then she had a new book called Bright Shining, which is about the idea of grace. And we talked a lot about grace and gratitude when we were there in Australia, which now is almost 18 months ago. But I wanted to bring you this section on Thanksgiving. And actually, the reason that I thought to bring this is that I got a lovely note from Julia.

2:11I did this email on when everything is feeling shitty and awful in the world. One way I was saying you can always feel good is to do something nice for someone else. You can do something generous. And I was talking about this thing that we're doing with Daily Stoic, which instead of doing a Cyber Monday sale or a Black Friday sale or any of those kinds of things around this time of the year, what we do instead is we host this fundraising drive for Feeding America. I donate a bunch of money and then I try to encourage you guys to donate money too so we can provide meals for people who didn't just stuff themselves over Thanksgiving.

2:46And over the last five or six years, I think we raised a little bit north of a million dollars, which is absolutely incredible. that's over 10 million meals for people who absolutely need it. And it's one of the things I'm most proud of. I've sold a lot of books in that time. I've set some great running times. I've accomplished some things. I've built some things. I'm proud of a lot of what I've done, but that's one of the things I'm proudest of. And that's the idea is like, that's something that's always in your control, doing something good, doing something generous, doing something kind. So if you want to contribute to that, you can do that.

3:16You just go to dailystoic.com slash feeding. And anyways, I wrote this article about it and Julia sent this very nice note saying how much she liked it and that people don't talk about this enough. And I said, hey, I'd love to chat with you next time I'm there. Probably going to be next fall when I do another Australia tour announcement about that to come. But in the meantime, I wanted to bring you this chunk because this is what we should be thinking today. Grace and gratitude, doing things for others not fighting for a deal on a TV or a car or, you know, checking your email to see what deals have come in.

3:50Do something nice for someone else. And if you want to do something for people who are hungry, you can donate to our drive. It's dailystoke.com slash feeding. I think we're currently recording this before Thanksgiving, just crossed 70 ,000. We're hoping to get to 300 ,000, which will provide, as I said, something like 3 million meals. You can check out Julia's book, Bright Shining, How Grace Changes Everything. You check out Phosphorescence and do read Victoria, which is one of my absolute favorites. And I'll leave you there. Listen to this episode and have a great day.

4:26We just took our kids to an outdoor performance at The Nutcracker. They had a snow cone and then they went insane in the car ride home. And one of the things I try to remind myself when that's happening is that I don't control my kids' behavior, especially when they're too far gone like that, but I do control how I respond, right? That's stoicism, but it's also what Dr. Becky talks about. Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a best-selling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence. My wife introduced me to Dr.

5:03Becky's books. I love them. I've recommended them a million times. I've had her on the podcast. And as it happens, Dr. Becky is hosting two live Q &A events for good inside members. I am one of them. She signed me up for it about a year and a half ago. I've loved it ever since. On December 1st, you can join Dr. Becky for her How Not to Raise Assholes event, which is about avoiding entitlement and raising kind, empathetic kids. And on December 15th, she's hosting her How Not to lose it over the holidays event, which I'm sure we could all use. As I said, I'm a big fan of Dr. Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent and just as a human being.

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7:27So Daka Keltner from the University of California, who's written about ore and he's done a lot of studies over the years, did a study recently of about 2 ,600 people across 26 countries to find out what was the most common experience of ore. You would imagine, like, what would you have said if it was? I don't know, a mountain or, you know, some natural phenomenon, the Grand Canyon kind of thing. Yeah, that's what I would say too. And so across all kind of histories, demographics, cultures, dialects, whatever, he found that the most common experience of it was actually seeing it in another person, in another human being, acts of moral beauty, of great courage, generosity, decency, people overcoming obstacles and hurdles, people overcoming things in life.

8:17And I was really struck by that and I wanted to explore it. Like, what does that actually look like when you do something that someone else doesn't deserve? Like, what impact does it have on you? What does it have on them? What does it mean for people witnessing it? And, yeah, to me, it's the very best of who we are. I was just thinking about that when I was reading this Lincoln book because there's this story. Lincoln's sort of an up-and-coming lawyer. He gets chosen to be on this case. It's the biggest case of his life. Yeah. And it ends up changing venues. And so the company, it's a big company, they bring out another lawyer.

8:52And that lawyer sees Lincoln as this country bumpkin, basically kicks him off the case. He still gets paid, but he kicks him off the case. He calls him like a gorilla to his face. He just sees him as like a, just a buffoon. And every night Lincoln, Lincoln decides to attend the trial anyway. He wants to learn from it. Every night, all the lawyers meet in the hotel lobby to discuss the case. They never include Lincoln. It's like the humiliation of his career. And, you know, like a decade and a half later, that lawyer is who Lincoln chooses as his secretary of war and the right man at the right time.

9:32And like when I think of things that strike me with awe, yeah, it's not it's not these brilliant works of art. It's not, you know, somebody did this athletic feat that I can't imagine. It's the sense of self and the empathy and the forgiveness to be like this person who humiliated me, who treated me like absolute garbage, is the right man for this thing. And I won't get in their way. Not only will I not get in their way, I will be their advocate. When you think of like, yeah, like when you think of Gandhi or you think of Jesus on the cross, forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.

10:07Like moments of that sort of almost superhuman grace is one of the most incredible and powerful forces in existence. And it changes everyone who witnesses it. Yes. Any of the scientific studies I've seen into that just show people are much more likely to do it themselves. Yes. One of those studies are on moral elevation in workforces. And if you see and find out, not in a way that trumpets it, hey, guess what, guys? I'm a great philanthropist. Here's my name across some wall. But when you find out that someone in a position of leadership has been quietly sacrificing time or money or caring for someone in a way they didn't necessarily need to, that can really shift a whole culture of a company.

10:48Yes. Yeah, when you are the angel that a person needs in a scenario. Yeah. And it, in many cases, was not only difficult, but it wasn't in your interest. There's something absolutely incredible about that. Yeah, and that's really interesting because a lot of people see grace as something nice and about being polite and not quite a Hallmark card but something kind of pretty and easy. Everyone appreciates it, celebrates it as it's happening. Lovely. Yes. It's like puppies and Kleenex tissues, right? But this is about something that's really hard to do. You know, forgiving people can be incredibly hard to do and you don't just do it once.

11:29You sometimes have to just do it every single day. You know, and sometimes it costs yourself. How many times should I forgive my brother? Seven times? No, 70 times. No, 70 times seven. And just the incredibleness of that. It's probably, I think that is the greatest concept of Christianity, that grace and forgiveness. And at the heart of that is grace has done nothing. You've done nothing to deserve it. Yes. Well, the idea that, to me, my understanding of Christianity And it's basically this idea, you were forgiven for everything. Yep. And so you were given a gift. Yes, that's right. Which means that you in turn have to give.

12:07Yeah. And that sort of obligation or that indebtedness, like you're a shitty person, you've done shitty things. So the idea that you get to hold that above someone else, that you get to hold something over someone else for having made a mistake or done you wrong or done the world wrong. You owe me, buddy. That's a luxury that you're actually not entitled to. Yeah. Which is amazing. Yes. And yeah, it doesn't actually make sense. You know, and look, I have grown up, as we talked about with my mother, who talked a lot about forgiveness, growing up, like really being exposed to the idea that you just, you forgive and forgive and forgive.

12:44Then as a reporter, I've done a lot of work on domestic abuse and violence and sexual assault. and I also looked at domestic violence in faith communities and could see how that was weaponised by abusers and sometimes by structures. To tell women especially, don't leave, just put up with it, you forgive again and again and again. And that's why I think we need to be cautious, that forgiveness doesn't mean, okay, I don't need to protect myself now, or I don't need to move away from you. Forgiveness can sometimes be cutting ties. Yeah. And walking away from. Well, first off, it's the idea that you have competing and sometimes conflicting obligations to yourself, to your children.

13:31That's right. To the person that comes after you. But also, I think what I just did this book on justice, and I think it's been helpful for me to understand there's the justice system is something apart from and separate. Yeah. And we is a societal invention. Right. That is required for us all to live together and function in a large group. and then our personal sense of justice, something very different. So you forgiving the person is not mutually exclusive with them being held accountable for that thing. And them being held accountable and how they're held accountable and the whole system built around it is based on the statistics and the experience and what society understands has to happen to protect future generations and to deter other people, et cetera.

14:18That's very different than what you as the individual ought to do. That is really important. It is not separate to justice. It's not separate to the consequences of justice. And it is very much about what you need as an individual. I got really interested in restorative justice when I was writing this book. And the idea being that you bring together, as you'd be familiar, you bring together the person the harm's been caused to, the person that caused the harm. You have a mediator who's very experienced. who spend a year working out whether these people can get together. And basically it's the victims who are really asking for these kinds of justice systems because they often go through a court.

14:57They've never even had to give a victim impact statement or they want to talk directly to the person that caused them harm. But again, there needs to be remorse and you can't have any expectation of forgiveness. So sometimes they want to know just a piece of information. Sometimes they want to know what are the last words my daughter said before she died. What are they? So it's kind of complicated but really quite amazing process, actually, because when it works, you know these two people staring at each other, trying to recognise harm caused and each other's humanity. It can allow for the possibility of redemption, but it also can really free the victim.

15:35And there was one woman I spoke to called Debbie McGrath, and her brother was killed. When she was 24, he was 20, and it was killed by a friend who just shot him one night after they'd been playing at the pub and killed him. No explanation has ever been given. And she found herself, she was then heavily pregnant, consumed with rage about this. She was so furious about it. That consumed in a way that it took over her mind, it took over her body. She put on a lot of weight. She got diabetes. She got insomnia. Her father got very ill. It just infected this whole community as these incidents and attacks and horrible things often do.

16:15And she told me that it was at a point where she would look at a sunset and she would be thinking about ways to murder this guy. It was just so she couldn't free herself from it. And one day she sat down opposite him, finally, in a restorative justice moment, and she just was able to say to him, this is what you did to me. This is what happened to my body. This is what happened to my mind. This is what you did to my father. This is what you did to my brother's son who never had a dad growing up. And she said there was a point at which during this that she sat up and because she instinctively, because she felt like something had been lifted from her.

16:50And she just looked around and realized it just felt that way. And she said that she had put everything that he did to her in a suitcase and left it at his feet and it was his. And after that, she was free.

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