Julia Baird on Building Resilience and How Grace Can Change Everything

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0:55I'm recording this on a Monday and Monday is our grocery store day in our family. I usually pick my kids up from school and we go over to Whole Foods, get all our groceries for the week. Although here very shortly, we're going to go over there to get our Thanksgiving turkey because they've got a bunch of great options. Turkeys start at$1.49 a pound if you have Prime with organic birds at$2.99 a pound. And they only carry no antibiotic ever turkeys that will bring quality to your table at a great price. Whole Foods has great everyday prices on all your Thanksgiving essentials, whether you celebrate with a massive family or just a few close friends.

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1:46Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their lives.

2:31Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. If you had to ask me what my favorite type of book is, like what's the book that gets me the most excited that I read in my both spare time, but also like, oh, that I just get so excited. They are big, thick doorstop level biographies. I have three in front of me because I've been working on something in the wisdom book now. And I was writing about Lincoln. I thought I had enough material on Lincoln and I went to write and I just didn't. And so I had to go back and do a bunch more research. And so I read these big books. I'll recommend them later because that's not what I'm talking about.

3:12So I love reading biographies specifically about people I don't know that much about or seemingly aren't that interesting or important. And, you know, the Stoics were popular with the Victorians. And I've, of course, heard of Queen Victoria, but I didn't know anything about her. And so I think it was when I was writing, before I wrote the Stillness book, I was like, I want to read a book about Queen Victoria. So I bought this book, Victoria the Queen, an intimate biography of the woman who ruled an empire by Julia Baird. And I just loved it. It was amazing. And one of my all-time favorite biographies, we carry it in The Painted Porch.

3:50I just learned so much about this person. That's what set me about wanting to learn about Queen Elizabeth II, who I talk a lot about in the Discipline book. But if you read Stillness, there's a bunch of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert stories there because they had this fascinating marriage. Sometimes I'm finding something I love about something in a biography. Sometimes I'm finding cautionary tales. Anyways, I love this book. So I just became a huge fan of this writer. And so she, a couple of years later, wrote this book, Phosphorescence, on awe, wonder, and things that sustain you when the world goes dark.

4:21I think I read it during COVID or right before COVID, and I just loved it. The difference between those two books is as different as maybe like, trust me, I'm lying, and some of my books. I don't know. I just loved it. And I interviewed Julia on the podcast shortly after I read Phosphorescence. We carried that in the painted portion. Grab that. And we connected over our mutual love of swimming. I made a mental note that she lives in Sydney. And so when I was in Sydney this summer to do those talks, by the way, I'm doing some talks in London, Rotterdam, Dublin, Vancouver, and Toronto. In November, you can buy tickets at ryanholiday.net slash tour.

4:56She was one of the first people that I shot a note to. And I said, I'd love to see you while I'm there. You're welcome to come to the talks. And she came down, we recorded this podcast in Australia. We did the earlier one virtually. And it was just amazing to talk to her about in person. And this is where this all comes full circle. What we nerded out with the most is a character in the Courage book, Florence Nightingale, who I was very excited to learn Julia is working on a book about. And I hope it's as big and long and detailed as her Queen Victoria book, because I am an absolute huge fan. In the meantime, She has another wonderful book out, which I was lucky enough to get a copy of while I was in Australia because it came out in Australia first.

5:41So I read that on my way home. She signed a copy for me. Bright Shining, How Grace Changes Everything is her new book. I am very excited about it. It's wonderful. She's wonderful. This conversation was wonderful. And I'm excited to bring you this book. Julia has a fascinating life. She comes from this political family. because she's a very big deal in Australia. She's a journalist. She had a very popular TV show there, I believe called The Drum. But on top of all this and her life experiences, she's an awesome writer. Awesome enough, full circle again. When I redid The Obstacle Is The Way, the 10th anniversary edition, which is also out now, there's a little section that she comes up in.

6:26So she's now made an appearance in several of my books. I'll bring you that little chunk right now from the audiobook, which I just finished recording.

6:40At certain moments in our brief existence, we are faced with great trials. Often those trials are frustrating, unfortunate, or unfair. They seem to come exactly when we think we need them the least. The question is, do we accept this as an exclusively negative event, or can we get past whatever negativity or adversity it represents and mount an offensive? Or more precisely, can we see that this problem presents an opportunity for a solution that we have long been waiting for? The writer Julia Baird tells the story of her lowest point. She was heartbroken. She was sick. She was tired. She sought out help from a therapist where she found herself saying out loud, I just don't know how I'm going to get through this.

7:24This is why we seek help, why we ask for advice, why we don't just pretend to be some lower case stoic that we're doing just fine when we're not. Because they are pouring her feelings out, Julia got an insight from her therapist that changed her life. It is now that everything you have been given in your life matters, her therapist explained. this is what you draw on your parents your friends your work your books everything you have ever been told everything you have ever learned this is when you use that

7:59anyways let's get into it i loved your biography of queen victoria and then i was like because i was going to write about queen elizabeth in my discipline book the second oh yeah and i was like There's got to be a book this good about her, and there wasn't. Oh, right, yeah. Maybe we're just too close to her. I don't know. She was still alive. It's pretty good. It was okay. It wasn't okay. Is she too close to it, maybe? I don't know. I felt she treated her more as a pop culture figure than a historical figure. So there was like a breeziness and a gossipiness to it, and not like a weight to it, which Queen Victoria was very interesting to me in that regard.

8:43Yeah. But yeah, they're very different books. It's unusual, I think, that someone would do sort of serious, big, thick biography and then go into the books that you're doing now. Was that a deliberate transition? I'm going to go back and do history next. Who are you going to do? Well, actually Florence Nightingale. I want to do a year of her – I'm going to do a year of her life and weave in. It's kind of going to be a creative thing, but there's something I've been wanting to say. I know you've written about her a little bit too, right? Yes. Yeah. I'm forgetting who, someone did an amazing biography of her.

9:15Yeah, and I've forgotten his name too, but it was about 10, 14 years ago. No, no, no, there's a woman, Cecil. Oh, Cecil Woodham-Smith. Yes. Yes. Incredible biography. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree. I loved her writing. Yes. Because she did also a two-part biography of Victoria, but she died. She only did the first part. Oh, I didn't know that. And I was really inspired by her because she had written, I think it's like thrillers or some kind of books before she, and she'd written novels before she did that. So I tried to learn from her how to pace it. She was very good at pacing because you would go, wow, even though you knew what was happening, you'd go through it.

9:49And The Potato Famine, she did a book on too. She also wrote a book on The Charge of the Light Brigade. That's incredible. Oh, yeah. And it's just called The Reason Why. Oh, wow. Because you know from the poem, like theirs is not to reason why. And it's like the reason why. And the reason why is there's no fucking reason. It's because. It's the idiocy. Yes. Of the. Do you know what always strikes me about the White Brigade? Do you know about these gentlemen viewers? So when they would have their battles down on the plane. Yeah. And people would come from Britain to watch. Sure. Like it was a game.

10:21And they would set out their picnic blankets and they'd be like, ha ha, great move and rah ha, go team. Yeah. Like the grotesquery of that as spectator sport has always struck me about those. Well, the sort of – And the Crimean ones. The bravery that they would charge into certain death but didn't have the courage to say, should we charge into – That's the paradox of that charge. Yeah, it's actually obedience. Yes. Which you need – Obedience to folly is also – So yes, both obedience and bravery. I talk about that when I talk to military leaders. there's this paradox, which like you think about what military culture is.

10:58It's about making everyone the same and think the same. It's creating obedience and it's creating camaraderie and creating a unit that's about the unit and not the individual. And then you get thrust into a position of leadership where suddenly you have to make moral decisions and you're expected to make the right moral decision and not just go along. And the tension of that, right? So like there's this crazy part in The Reason Why where she talks about how after they get back, so like, you know, the 600 does not come back, but there's like 200 that survive. There was an implicit assumption and they start to wheel the horses around and regroup to go again.

11:37Like, so not only did they do it the first time and not question it, then when it was obviously a mistake and they just watched everyone get slaughtered, the impulse is to like, do it again. And so like, how do you maintain your individual, your individuality and your ability to make rational choices inside this culture. That's the tension. And the best, best leaders managed to somehow square that impossible circle. Right. But anyway, she was amazing. She has a line in that Florence Nightingale book where like what I thought was so fascinating about Florence Nightingale is her parents didn't want her to do it.

12:17Yeah. The urge in her. That's what I almost want to write about that time when she It was straining to go. What was in that? Well, you know, the hero's journey is the call to adventure. And then the second part of the hero's journey is the refusal of the call. Like, that's part of it. Yeah, right. And part of it for her is she refuses the call. Not for like, she hears this voice and it goes for a little while. And then she ignores it. Not, again, like we do. Like, hey, I think I want to be a writer. I think I want to move, you know, to another country. Or I think I want to start a company. She ignores it for eight years.

12:53Yeah. And she gets it again. Then she ignores it for eight. It takes her 16 years to take even the smallest tangible step towards doing this thing. Think about all the sediment on top of her of cultural expectations. Her sister's hysteria, her parents. And she had that lovely bloke who wanted to marry her who was quite poetic. Yeah. If she was going to marry, he probably would be great. She had to resist so much. Yes. To do that. Right. Like her parents are basically, we'd rather you be a prostitute than a nurse. Yeah, but it was considered pretty slutty to be a nurse then anyway. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why she was so like, she tried to bring respectability to it.

13:32Well, to me, one of the things I talked about her in the book I just did is like, there was this sense. I think what's so interesting about Victorian culture is how repeatedly there's sort of this triumph of hope over experience. Just like, oh, the firstborn should be in charge, even though it like never works out. Or like, oh, like both women should not go anywhere near a hospital. And then also a woman should just automatically know how to take care of someone. Right. The idea that nursing or any kind of activism or helping of people required like competence and training. That's like her main innovation was like, no, nursing is a craft.

14:10Profession. And you have to understand it. And like this whole idea of do no harm was not like, was a literal thing. She was like, no, you make things worse. You're more likely to die under the care of a doctor than at home. And her genius was to actually figure out, not just have sympathy and affection for someone who's suffering, but know what to do about it. Yeah. And she knew about things like the side of green makes people better. Scientists have only really just discovered that in the last 20 years here. Yeah. Right? Or like, hey, we should let air into this building. We shouldn't have all these sick people sealed up in a brick building breathing each other's noxious germs.

14:51But yeah, it wasn't just at some intuitive level, but she seemed to be willing to look at the evidence and solve problems. And from her bed, when she was confined for so long, for many decades, she would write and say, look, I'm worried about what's happening to native populations in all the countries of the Commonwealth. Can you send me the statistics on who's dying and what they're dying from? And even though she has said things indicative of her time, She's problematic in that sense. That she was saying there is a disproportionate number of deaths of Aboriginal Australians. They need to be on their country.

15:26You're taking them away from their country. Things like this incredible insight. Yeah. Just because she was looking at the data from her bed in London. Well, yeah, people, I think one of her aunts wrote this letter about how, you know, the image, like there's the famous poem where she's the lady with the lamp. And she's going from bedside to bedside. and she was saying like what you're actually missing is like the letter writing and the studies and the accounting and the meetings that she was this sort of bureaucratic and logistical genius yes she well she was the first one to really properly use the pie chart yeah for persuasive means that's right but i feel that there's been this revision so there's first is that the gentle nurturer the lady of the lamp and then this is absolutely you read some accounts and it's like this like a.n.

16:07wilson and so on this ferocious like dragon lady who killed women or people men around her because she worked so hard and she worked them so hard and so in between there's a really interesting story yeah this fusing of sort of sympathy and empathy and care yeah with very sharp competence and effectiveness and savvy yeah is fascinating to me totally yeah yeah and she'd pop up occasionally in Queen Victoria's diary, like Nightingale would rock up at the castle having shaved her head because there was lice outbreak in the hospital she was in, or just begging for more money. And she actually took Victoria and Albert very seriously.

16:45She thought there were serious people wanting to be. Obviously, Albert was defined serious, but as opposed to the dilettantes and the aristocrats of the age who weren't interested in... Well, I can't wait to read that. That sounds amazing. Yeah. So I put phosphorescence in. I'm doing a 10-year anniversary edition of The Obstacle Sway, and I use one of your stories in it. Oh, it's fun. You talked about it. So you're at your sort of lowest ebb talking to your therapist. Oh, yeah. Do you want to tell that story? Yeah. And it's at this time that it counts, everything you've ever taught, everything you've ever read, that thing.

17:19Yeah, this is when you use it. This is it, yeah. What did that mean to you? So I think that when the therapist says to me, this is it, It's that sense of like stop flailing around and draw on not just what you've got innately within you, but all the wisdoms and all the things that you've been given and seen and been taught your whole life. And inside you there's this reservoir and pull on that. And I found that really like sobering in a good way. Yeah. It made me just stop and think and reflect and go, yeah, that's it. This is it. This is when you just get it together. Yeah. What else were all those experiences for if not leading you towards something?

18:02Yeah. Even all those little, like, I know you keep a commonplace book. Yeah. Even all those little, like, collections of quotes you do and books you read and just wisdoms that you reflect on. That's it. Yeah. What's the point of it all if you're not, like, finding yourself in just a whole pile of crap and trying to work a way out of it? Yeah. Yeah, to me, and that's to me what stoicism is, is for the moments when life sort of kicks your ass or you find yourself overwhelmed. You're supposed to draw not just on your own experience and wisdom, but also we have the benefit of the wisdom of so many people that came before us.

18:36Right. And how do you draw on that? And yeah, if you're not applying, if it's not in this moment that you use this stuff, what was it all for? Yeah, exactly. I like the idea that you have a reservoir too. You're actually building something inside you. That you're absorbing it and you can use that. I've been thinking about that because, yeah, the one thing we know about the future is that it's uncertain, right? But then I go, I made it through the last four years, which were insane. And if you had asked most people at the beginning of 2020, hey, could you get through what the next year, the next two years, the next three years is, they would have said, that's insane.

19:15That's impossible. And then you're here. And then what's weird is even having gone through that, then we still had that sort of low level or high level dread about the future as if we haven't proved to ourselves that we can get through things. I think one of the things that I wrestle with in my work as well is that if you talk about things like awe and wonder and things that sustain you, people often say that, oh, you're just trying to distract yourself. It's like, oh, you have a terrible diagnosis or you've lost someone you love, just go and lie under a tree, go for a swim. It's not about that.

19:51It's not about distraction. It's about strength. we have just got so much to do individually collectively that you need to work out what makes you strong yeah and where do you what are your off ramps for like extreme emotion like the idea that you're the idea that stoicism is just the absence of emotion is impossible we we know that's not healthy but if you have outlets for those things or you have ways to process and evaluate and then sort of dissipate those emotions, then you cannot be destroyed by them. Right. That's kind of how I think about it. Physical exercise is a thing like that. Yep.

20:28Getting out into nature is a way to do that. What are the means by which you process the overwhelming amount of shit that life throws at you? Yeah. And I think sometimes we're taught to infinitely burrow into ourselves. Yeah. In and in and in. Yeah. self-reflect, have lots of smoothies, do all those things which are actually really good. But in and of themselves, I think we often forget how the importance of being looking outwards, paying attention to the natural world, to the broader world, to the suffering of other people, just anyone around you in your circle. At any given point, there'll be people in your life who are dealing with stuff.

21:04Yes. Who need a hand. And I think often that can soothe you and strengthen you in a way that you don't anticipate you and you go, you know, my own stuff is pretty crap. And by the end of today, it's still going to be like that, but I can go off and help someone else. Yeah. Because when you were going through everything that you were going through, your family was also going through stuff at the same time, right? With my mother. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My brother was also in politics and that was kind of a lot of high octane activity and criticism and all the rest of it. And my mother and our whole family revolved around her like she was just the light the lamp of our family and she had a progressive neurological disease that just eventually her body wouldn't respond to her anymore um it just wouldn't do what she said we first worked it out when she couldn't she was starting to have falls but she couldn't clap she couldn't clap her hands together and then bit by bit she couldn't walk and then the worst thing was when she couldn't talk and she would have to point things out with her fingers and then on a, and she, we could still communicate that way.

22:08And then that, that hand went on the right hand. And then she would point it out with her left. And I remember when I realized her left was seizing, that was the point at which I probably really cried the most in her place of care with my kids were with me. And I remember trying to push my chair backwards so she couldn't see me, but I had just realized that's, that's it. She's gone. I can't get any more words from her and that's such a distressing thing and um a friend of mine came over yesterday and was talking about the celine dion um documentary yeah about and she's got stiff person syndrome and she said it reminded me of your mom it's that thing of like your body just like twisting and being just not doing what you're telling it to do so yeah that was um there's a very particular kind of grief when someone is slipping away from you when they're still here that a lot of people deal with and um that was really hard and then when I get sick myself all I want to do is like curl up on my on my mom you know what I mean yeah physically metaphorically whatever and um we just kind of limped on together a bit how does that not just break you completely because we still had each other I think and because that whole thing of like people go, why me?

23:21I've never actually even understood that because why the person next to you? Why anyone else except for you? I fundamentally don't understand that question. Why would you be exempt from everything? You can't work your way towards a life without suffering. You can do your best to avoid it, but it is on the whole kind of inevitable. But I think what I've written about, my mother had a very strong faith as well, and she struggled so much towards the end, but I know that she held on really tight to what was important to her and being surrounded by her family. And it meant a lot to my brothers and I to be curled up in the room next to her on the night that she died.

24:00And it was one of those nights where we're listening for her breath because you're waiting for those last, you can tell, you know, for the last fully drawn breath. You get that rattle. And we were sitting there and sitting all around her and, like, talking and then the staff kept bringing us more wine. I don't know where they had it from. In the hospital? In the aged care home. And so we were drinking and they were laughing about like being kids and then we were with her and then we were all, my brothers were on the floor and I was curled up on a chair next to my mum and my head was right next to her.

24:32And my brother suddenly woke up like just as she was about to take a last breath and was like pulling on our toes, guys, guys, guys, wake up. And then we're all standing, leaning over her. And she took her last breath and she was obviously very, very still and starting to cool. But the three of us standing there around her, I felt like we had walked her as far as we could go to the end of the earth. And the last thing she would have heard was the laughter and the love of her children, just as we were crying now. So those are the things that sustain you. Like you can't say, my mother gave me so much love and wisdom through her life to say then when she died that I couldn't go on would almost betray everything she'd ever taught and given me, going back to what we were talking about before.

25:22And with my own thing, my own cancer and poor health, I think the reason that I've focused so much on things like awe, wonder, beauty, grace, is by holding onto those things, it's kept me sane because you're remembering the best of the world, the natural world around us and awe and so on, but you're also remembering the best of what it is to be human.

25:52We 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.

26:29Becky'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 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.

27:10And Daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 percent off with code STOIC15. You just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events. Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastro County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove in Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns.

27:53There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields, and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in. We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course. Because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour.

28:30And of course, this is stoicism too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you. Discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours.

28:57There's an American poet named William Stafford, and he tells a story about he has adult children. and they're all home and you know it's like thanksgiving or christmas or something and and uh you know he and his wife go to bed and the kids stay up and they're hanging out in the living room or the dining room table just talking to like you know late and he's laying in bed with his wife and he says to her this is the eulogy that we get to hear you know like your kids being together your house being full yes that's it that sort of last moment yeah everything that comes after is for everyone else but you those those moments where you're together and there's connection we think of awe as simply being yeah like a bird or something in the water or some natural phenomenon yeah but it's also moments like that moments yeah i mean it's also music and art and anything that kind of can stop you in your tracks yeah and make you think and marvel a little bit.

29:56But there is a sense of awe in love. That's what you're describing in that family setting. Yeah. The unspoken communication, the sense that you woke up exactly before. There's something mystical and mysterious and as much a phenomenon as flight or a flower. There's something to that, I think. I agree. And it's also like everything. Yeah. You know, it's funny, like, obviously the ancient world was full of death and they'd become sort of a nerd to it, but some of the most beautiful writings from the Stoics, Seneca writes these essays on grief. He survived those that are called consolations. He writes these letters and I sort of reread them whenever someone I care about passes on.

30:46And one of the passages I think about all the time, he's writing to this woman who lost her father and who he had known and he was saying, you know, wherever your father is now, what would he want his memory to invoke in you? Like, would obviously, when you die, it would be weird if nobody missed you. But like, if your memory filled people with sadness and anguish and despair, or that feeling of, why me? Why was he taken from me? In a weird way, be kind of a repudiation of your life. If you would want the memory of you to bring happiness, the logic of that is such a stoic way of thinking about it.

31:28But I think about that all the time. How would they want you to feel when you think of them? To think of them, exactly. And sadness is not even on the list of top ten emotions that I would want my kids to think about if I was gone. Exactly. Grief is something that we don't necessarily deal with very well. And people often say, you've got to get over it. You've got to move on. You've got to get to the next phase. Whereas actually often you're permanently changed. And it's one of the things I loved about Queen Victoria. She continues to be criticised to this day because she grieved. She was very melodramatic in her grief and it went on for a very long time and she didn't appear in public.

32:01But I like how spectacularly she insisted on her right to grieve, thereby enabling a whole other bunch of women in her times who also were widows and were used to then being just put out in the back parlour. Your time as a functional human was over and she insisted it wasn't. But I've been thinking a lot about one thing that my mother said to me, which was that when I was a kid, which was, if anything ever happens to me and we've like, you've just said something you regret or done something or haven't done something. And I want, you know, I forgive you and I love you. And what a gift. That's such a gift.

32:42Because I think a lot of people, when they think about someone they've lost, they wish they've done more or they'd been more or they hadn't said something. And I think it's really important to release each other from that and go fundamentally. I've said this to my kids again recently. They're like, yep, okay. But it's important to, I think that's really important to hold on to something I've been thinking about lately is last moments. There was a column in the New York times about, is this, could this be the last, about growing older and should you grow older gracefully or disgracefully? And you know, the same old things, enjoy every moment and so on.

33:18And someone wrote in, and it was this really poignant, beautiful thing, because she said that she was coming back and she'd spent the day mining her grandkids. And her grandkids, she'd been making Play-Doh with them. And she got home at the end of the day and took her shoes off and in the tread was pushed this Play-Doh. And she was like, that's so annoying. I remember how that used to be with my kids. And then she paused and was like, well, actually, how long were these little ones want me to make Play-Doh with them? And when was the last time I'll actually be able to do that? and just to have joy in that.

33:50And it got me thinking about kind of the last time we ever kind of say or do something. Elizabeth Strout wrote about it in Lucy by the Sea, the last time you pick up your kid. Yes. When is that? But the more you think about it, every day is full of those last times. Yeah. No, someone was pointing out to me that there's something wonderful about watching your kids grow, but there's also this grief because as great as my seven-year-old going on eight-year-old is, the six-year-old version of him is gone. Right. And the five-year-old version is gone. Yeah. And you, since he has a younger brother who's more than two years younger, you're reminded constantly of that person that's gone also.

34:35Mm-hmm. And so there is this kind of perpetual grief. There's a brilliant poem about how the seasons, you know we think of the the new season coming and how wonderful it is the flowers or the whatever but you're not thinking of the winter that's gone forever right and and that there's there is kind of a sadness of the changing of seasons there too if if you're not paying attention so whenever i'm clipping their nails or i take them for a haircut or their clothes don't fit i think of what that is an illustration of is the passage of time that never comes back yeah my i was trying to think when was the last time I picked up my kids so he's 15 I've got two kids but my son is 15 and um he used to really just love to hold on to me as I did housework he was just like a little koala you know and he had this morning dance he was such a morning person he'd be like morning dance morning and I was like I'm not a morning person so it was always amusing to me and today he's on school holidays and he was out um there's shaving cream on the out on the um in the bathroom he was running a bath and he was eating fried chicken in the bar and watching Netflix.

35:43Yeah. And he was calling out to me like this. He was like, Mom. I was like, dude, your voice. And it's just a long way from the morning dance, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, just the absurdity and the insanity of it. Yeah, who is this creature who's constantly growing, but how great. Jeannie Gaffigan, she's the wife of the comedian, Jim Gaffigan, she was talking about the Play-Doh thing. She was saying that, you know, you may have just missed it. Did your kids play with slime? Oh, yes. She was like, she ends up getting a brain tumor and she thinks she might die. And she was realizing that she spent all her time, she says, engaging in control of the slime, not in playing with the slime.

36:22So, you know, it's like, hey, no, no, you can't play with this on the table. It has to be in a thing. No, you're going to get it on the floor. Like, you spend all the energy trying to put up guardrails and boundaries to keep the house clean. There's a reason for that moment. That slime sucks. It's disgusting. It's the worst. But what you're missing and what we're so prone to do as adults is just completely slide over the fact that they think this is the most fun and wonderful thing in the world. Like we don't get the joy of it at all. It makes no sense to me. I find it disgusting. The smell is weird.

36:57But clearly for them, it's beyond fun. Yeah. And so our, but instead of trying to understand why it's so fun, our impulse is to corral the fun. Yeah. And to suppress the fun. Yeah. But then I'll get an image of, wait, what's the Dr. Seuss thing when the kids just go feral in the house? That's just every day at my house. Yeah, exactly. It's true though. Maybe slime outside and we should all play. Well, then it's like, hey, let's put glitter in the slime. And then it's, you know, obviously there it's fun because the consequences are not falling on them. But, you know, you're focusing on the consequences.

37:34And what you're not thinking about is that at some point it's going to hit you as you go to throw away the slime from the play closet or whatever. Totally. That they don't do this anymore. And that will make you sad. Being a parent, hey? Yeah. No, it's funny. I think one thing that's all sharing common, another story I added in to the Obstacles Away, there's a story about Hemingway. He's in Europe with his wife and she goes to meet him. She brings all of his writings. He has this meeting with an editor and she leaves it like on a train. She loses everything that he's worked on, like his whole back catalog.

38:12Oh my gosh. And he's writing a letter to Ezra Pound after. And he says, look, I know what you're going to tell me, which is that this is for the best and it's going to force me to change and redo it all better. And he says, I know, but I'm not there yet. Give me some time. Yeah. And I think it's, it's that way with grief. It's that way with, you know, experiences with your kids. The clarity of it will hit you in retrospect, but it's in the moment. If you can give yourself some of the insight that, you know, later you're going to have, like later, you're going to look back at this and see this as a formative moment.

38:50Later, you're going to look back at this as a wonderful childhood memory. But right now, all you're thinking about is you're tired, or you don't want to clean it up, or that it's so unfair, or that it's so painful. So the faster you can get there, the better. Yeah. I love the last moments idea, though. Yes. Yeah. Well, how will you think about this if this was... It's a way of forcing yourself to get out of the moment and get perspective about the moment i think yeah exactly and not just wish them away because you're yes tired and they want yet another book yes you know that thing you sometimes do with a book and then you double the pages cheat yes so you read it more quickly um yeah just just i think you've got you've just got to soak all that up yeah no you you rush through bedtime and then one night they go all right good night yeah and you're like wait we're not doing the whole thing yeah and and it's gone forever and and then in that moment you will feel a profound sadness and you will wonder what the fuck you rushed through those other ones for yeah so you could answer emails or watch something on netflix like i when i think about that impulse of let's speed this along how rarely is it ever for their benefit i tell myself you have to go to bed you You know, you're going to, it's, I mean, it's not like they have a presidential debate the next morning, you know, like, they could be tired the next morning.

40:19Who cares? Like, none of it matters. But, so what is it that I feel like I'm having to rush through to go do? And it never ages well. Whatever the thing was, it never ages well. Exactly. It was like, oh, there was something on the counter that I wanted to eat. It's like, there was something I wanted to watch. There was a phone call I was going to make. Right. It's never important. Right. And then you're rushing through a thing you never get back. And now I'm getting, I have to remind them to say goodnight. Yeah. Because they like to go in and like do their own thing. There's a passage in Meditations where Marks Rose says, you know, when you tuck your child in at night, you should say to yourself, they will not survive till the morning.

41:01And this is a man who buried six children. So I don't think he's saying this. Glibly. Glibly. And I don't think he's trying to practice some kind of monkish philosophical detachment from his child. I think he's trying to say, you only get so many of these. If you knew this was the last time you were going to do it, how would you do it? And it would not be to skip some of the pages in the book. Yeah. It would not be to, come on. You know? Like, I try to go like, he wants me to get him something. That's wonderful. You know what I mean? Like, I am getting it for him because, or them, because I love them.

41:45Yeah. And they are giving me a chance to do it again. Yeah. Or, you know, you get them down and you sneak out of the room and you're like, and then you hear yeah tap tap tap yeah and you're like there's the the first impulse is you know yeah and then and then the second impulse i try i try to will myself to say i get to do it again yeah exactly i'd still prefer to go to sleep but i get to do it again yeah and there's something about that i think that's there's a reason why they go the fuck to sleep was such a big hit and they always come back out when i'm in the middle of a snack that i probably shouldn't be having yes like their halloween candy or something you know yeah yeah What?

42:23Yeah. They sound like, I knew you did that. You put me to sleep and you sit up here and eat ice cream. Yes, I do. That is right. I feel like that gift your mother gave you of saying, hey, like, I forgive you. Don't feel at all. That's, in a way, the definition of grace. Exactly. Exactly. because she very naturally, you know, you see the best in people and you place the love first and you never exploit a weakness as opposed to, I knew you never, you know, valued me. I knew you never recognised this, that and the other. Like, you know, a lot of people get vindictive at the point of death. So to be able to say, you know what, take, there's just so much love there.

43:07Take that. Yeah. And keep going.

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44:22What drove you to write about Grace? Two things. Firstly, was my experience of Grace through her because it was something she really believed in. And I saw that what she did and the way she was with so many people kind of really could transform lives and change people. And still have people kind of coming up to me and talking about it. and what she did, the idea of forgiveness when it really just seems impossible and actually absurd. Yeah. Loving people who are just complete jerks. She'd always be like, oh, man, what do I do about this person at work? Like someone who's really undermining me and treating me like, they were just like crap, passive-aggressive or aggressive-aggressive or whatever, and she'd be like, just try to love them.

45:08I'm like, mom, are you serious right now? So, but she was all, it's the sense of like, it seems implausible. It's so far beyond eye for an eye. Yeah. But then what would it do to people if you do that? In cases when you show mercy. Yeah. Not merit. In a case when you do things for people who don't necessarily deserve it. And I think that's so crucial and wild. And it's not to say there's not, you shouldn't have any boundaries. Sure. And maybe we'll get to forgiveness, but it's not to say that you allow anyone to do anything and the whole culture of impunity. But the other reason that forgiveness can be astonishing.

45:46So the other reason I want to write about it is because I've written and thought so much about awe. Yeah. And I know this is something you think about too, but it's, you know, that sense of feeling small in the natural world, how psychologically healthy that is, that sense of being overcome, overwhelmed, like struck by something and realising that there's a great, massive, marvellous universe well beyond us, just how psychologically healthy that is and how that had really kept me strong through some of the darkest times of my life. And there's Daka Keltner from the University of California who's written about awe and he's done a lot of studies over the years, did a study recently of about 3 ,000 or was about 2 ,600 people across 26 countries to find out what was the most common experience of awe.

46:35You would imagine, like, what would you have said if it was? I don't know, a mountain or, you know, some natural phenomenon, a 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 um people overcoming obstacles and hurdles um people overcoming things in life and i was really struck by that and i was wanted to explore it like what does that actually look like um 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 what does it mean for people witnessing it yeah 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 a sort of an up-and-coming lawyer 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 on another lawyer and 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.

47:52He 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. And like when I think of things that strike me with, oh yeah, it's not these brilliant works of art. It's not, you know, somebody did this athletic feat that I can't imagine.

48:34It'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. And not only will I not get in their way, I will be their advocate. When you think of Gandhi or you think of Jesus on the cross, forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do. Like 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.

49:15And 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. Yes. Yeah, when you are the angel that a person needs in a scenario. And it, in many cases, was not only difficult, but it wasn't in your interest. There's something absolutely incredible about that.

49:53Yeah, 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. You 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?

50:31No, 70 times seven. Just the incredibleness of that. It's probably, I think, that is the greatest concept of Christianity, the grace and forgiveness. Yes. 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 is 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. Yeah. 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.

51:17You owe me, buddy. That's a luxury that you're actually not entitled to. Yeah. Which is amazing. Yes. And yeah, doesn't actually make sense. Yes. And look, I have grown up, as we talked about with my mother, who talked a lot about forgiveness, growing up really being exposed to the idea that you forgive and forgive and forgive. Then 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 weaponized by abusers and sometimes by, like, structures to tell women especially, don't leave, just put up with it, you forgive again and again and again.

52:01And that's why I think we need to be cautious, That forgiveness doesn't mean, okay, I don't need to protect myself now. I don't need to move away from you. Forgiveness can sometimes be cutting ties and walking away from. Well, first off, it's the idea that you have competing and sometimes conflicting obligations to yourself, to your children. That's right. To the person that comes after you. But also, I think, as I just did this book on justice, and I think it's been helpful for me to understand that justice is something apart from, and separate that is a societal invention that is required for us all to live together and function in a large group.

52:43And then our personal sense of justice is 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 is based on the statistics and the experience and what society understands has to happen to protect future generations and to deter other people, etc. That'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.

53:22I got really interested in restorative justice when I was writing this book. And the idea being that you bring together, 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. You 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. They'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.

53:57and you can't have any expectation of forgiveness. Yeah. 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. So this kind of complicated but really quite amazing process actually because when it works, you have these two people staring at each other, trying to recognize harm caused and each other's humanity. It can allow for the possibility of redemption, but it also can really free the victim. And there was one woman I spoke to called Debbie McGrath, and her brother was killed when she was 24, he was 20, and was killed by a friend who just shot him one night after they'd been playing at the pub and killed him.

54:43No 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. 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. And 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. Like 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.

55:25And 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. And she just looked around and realized that 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 freed.

55:58She goes, I don't know if that was forgiveness. I don't know what it was, but I now, her worst fear was that she wouldn't be able to love again because love it for her was associated with loss. And she had grandkids. And now she said to me, I can, I can love my grandson and like moments like that. thanks so much for listening if you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show we appreciate it and I'll see you next episode

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