The Daily Stoic - Julia Baird on Building Resilience and How Grace Can Change Everything

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

The fundamental idea of Stoicism is that we cannot control what happens to us (or the ones we love), we can only control how we respond. Julia Baird knows about cultivating this resilience and Stoic response, after losing her mother and battling health issues, and how approaching grief with a sense of grace can transform ourselves and the world around us. While in Sydney, Ryan had the chance to sit down with Julia in-person to discuss what she learned from researching the lives of Queen Victoria and Florence Nightingale, and why she was compelled to write about grace for her latest book, Bright Shining: How Grace Changes Everything.Julia Baird is an author, broadcaster, and journalist based in Sydney, Australia. Be sure to check out her books, Phosphorescence: A Memoir of Finding Joy When Your World Goes Dark, Victoria: The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire, and Bright Shining: How Grace Changes Everything. Follow Julia on Instagram @JuliaBaird and on X @BairdJulia 📕 Get a signed, numbered first-edition of the 10th Anniversary Edition of The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday at dailystoic.com/obstacle🎟 Ryan Holiday is going on tour! Grab tickets for London, Rotterdam, Dublin, Vancouver, and Toronto at ryanholiday.net/tour✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the daily Stoic early and ad free right now. Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. We've got a bit of a commute now with the kids and their new school. And so one of the things we've been doing as a family is listening to audiobooks in the car. Instead of having that be dead time, we want to use it to have a live time. We really want to help their imagination soar. And listening to Audible helps you do precisely that. Whether you listen to short stories,

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And as an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. By the way, you can grab Right Thing right Now on Audible. You can sign up right now for a free 30-day audible trial and try your first audiobook for free. You'll get Right Thing Right Now totally for free. Visit audible.ca to sign up. Buried in the depths of the internet is the Kill List, a cache of chilling documents containing hundreds of names, photos, addresses and specific constructions for their murders. Kill List is a true story of how I ended up in a race against time to warn those who lives

were in danger. Follow Kill List on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Kill List and more Exhibit C Truecrime shows like Morbid early and ad free right now by joining Wandery Plus. Welcome 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. Hey, 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, 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. So 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 Stokes 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 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 painting porch. I 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 have 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 a couple of years later, she wrote this book, Phosphorescence, on awe, wonder,

and things that sustain you when the world goes dark. I 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 in 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 portrait, 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.

She 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. 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. So 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. 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 re-did the obstacle is the way, the 10th anniversary edition, which is also out now, there's a little section that she comes up in.

So she's now made an appearance in several of my books. I'll bring you that little chunk right now from the audio book, which I just finished recording. ["The Last Supper"] At 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. This is why we seek help, why we ask for advice, why we don't just pretend to be some lowercase 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. Anyways, let's get into it. I loved your biography of Queen Victoria.

And then I was like, cause I was gonna write about Queen Elizabeth in my discipline book, the second. And I was like, there's gotta 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, I couldn't-

Well, Sally- She was still alive, but they're- It's pretty good. It was okay. It wasn't okay. Is she too close to it, maybe? I don't know. I just didn't, I didn't,

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. 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 into history next.

Who are you going to do? Well, actually Florence Nightingale. I wanna do a year of her. I'm gonna do a year of her life and weave in. It's kind of gonna be a creative thing, but there's something I've been wanting to. 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. Yeah, 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. Incredible biography. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 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. I agree. I loved her writing. Yes. Cause 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, um, like, not like, I think it's like thrillers or some kind of like books before she, she had written novels before she did that. So I tried to learn from her how to pace it. She was very good at pacing cause you would go, wow, like even though you knew what was happening, you'd go through it. There's the potato famine.

She did a book on too. She also wrote a book on the charge of the light brigade. That's incredible. And it's just called the reason why. Oh, well, as 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 of the- Yes. 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 and people would come from Britain to watch like it was a game and they would send out their picnic blankets and they'd be like, ha ha, great move and rah, ha, go team. Like the grotesquerie of that as spectator sport has always struck me about those.

The bravery that they would charge into certain death, but didn't have the courage to say, should we charge into it? That's the paradox of that charge. Yeah, it's actually obedience. Yes, which you need. Obedience to folly is also, but so yes, both obedience and bravery. Well, I talk about that when I talk to military leaders,

there's this paradox, which like you think about what military culture is, it'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. Like, 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 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, like- Yeah, the urge in her. That's what I almost want to write about,

that time when she was straining to go. What was in that? Well, 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 gets, 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. I think I want to start a company. She ignores it for eight years and she gets it again. And then she ignores it for eight. It takes her 16 years to 16 years to take even the smallest tangible step towards doing this thing. But 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. If she was gonna marry, he probably would be great. She had to resist so much to do that. Right, like her parents are basically, we'd rather you be a prostitute than a nurse. Yeah, but it was pretty, 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. Well, 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 to 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 just should just automatically know how to take care of someone. 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 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 sight of green makes people better. Scientists have only really just discovered that in the last 20 years here. Yeah. Right. Like, or, or like, Hey, we should let air into this building. Shouldn't have all these sick people sealed up in a brick building, breathing each other's noxious germs.

Right. But yeah, just at some, it wasn't just at like some intuitive level, but she seemed to be willing to like, look at the evidence and solve problems. And from her bed, like 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 da, da, da. 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. You're taking them away from their country. Things like this incredible insight. Just because she was looking at the data from her bed in London. I think one of her aunts wrote this letter about how the image, 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 was the first one to really properly use the pie chart for persuasive means. That's right. But I feel that there's been this revision. So there's first is that the gentle nurture of the lady of the lamp. And then this is absolutely, you read some accounts and it's like this, like A.N. Wilson and so on, this ferocious like dragon lady killed women, 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 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 hotel she was in or just begging for more money. And she actually took Victoria and Albert very seriously. She thought there were serious people wanting to meet. Obviously Albert was defined serious, but as opposed to the dilettantes and the aristocrats of the age who weren't interested in watching this. Well, I can't wait to read that. That sounds amazing.

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, that's fun. You talked about, so you're sort of lowest ebb, talking to your therapist. Oh yeah.

This is, 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. Yeah, this is when you use it. This is it, yeah. What did that mean to you? So I think that when, so 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 what you, 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. It made me just stop and think and reflect and go, yeah, that's it. This is it. This is when you, you just get it together. Yeah. We, what else were all those experiences for, if not leading you towards something? Yeah. Even all those little, like, I know you keep a commonplace book, even all those little like collections of quotes you do and books you read and just wisdoms that you, that you reflect on.

It's that's it. 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, 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 wisdoms, but also we have the benefit of the wisdom of so many people that came before us. 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, that'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, are you just trying to distract yourself? It's like, oh, you have a terrible diagnosis

or someone you love, you've lost someone you love, just go and lie under a tree, go for a swim. It's not about that. It's like we have got, it'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 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. That's kind of how I think about it. Physical exercise is a thing like that. You have getting out into nature as a way to do that. What are the means by which you process the overwhelming amount of shit that life throws at you? And I think sometimes we're taught to infinitely borrow 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. You 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 gonna be like that,

but I can go off and help someone else. Yeah, because when you were going through everything that you're going through, your family was also going through stuff at the same time, right? With my mother? 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. And then that, that hand went, her 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 who 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 it, she's gone. I can't get any more words from her. And that's such a distressing thing. And a friend of mine came over yesterday and was talking about the Ceylon Dion documentary 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, it'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 that was really hard. And then when I get sick myself, all I want to do is like curl up on my mom. You know what I mean? Yeah. Physically, metaphorically, whatever. And 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? I'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. And 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, the 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, in the aged care home. And so we were drinking and then we 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 mom and my head was right next to her. And, um, my brother suddenly woke up like, just as she was about to take a last breath and was was pulling on our toes, goes, guys, guys, guys, wake up. And then, and 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 and with my own cancer and poor health, 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 the world, the natural world around us and all, and so on. But you're also remembering the best of what it is to be human. Hello, Matt and Alice here, the hosts of Wanderers podcast, British Scandal. Our latest series, Peru 2, begins on the sandy shores of Ibiza. Michaela McCollum should have been having the summer of her dreams, but it all went wrong when she met the gorgeous Devi in a bar. Think less holiday romance, more recruitment for a drug cartel. She agreed to team up with another young Brit, fly to Spain to collect a drugs package, then

head straight back. However, only at 30,000 feet does Michaela realise she's not on the way to Spain, she's heading for Peru. And when they get there, they find out it's not a small drugs package but 11 kilograms of cocaine. The summer holiday turns into a spell in a Peruvian prison and a story that becomes an international media sensation. To find out the full story, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts or listen early and ad free on Wondry Plus on Apple podcasts or the Wondry app. I'm Matt Lewis, host of the Echoes of History podcast where every week we'll be delving

into the real-life history that inspires the locations, characters and storylines of the legendary Assassin's Creed game series. Join us as we explore the streets of a Viking colony, scale sand dunes in the shadow of the Sphinx, witness world-changing revolutions, and come face to face with history's most significant individuals. So whether you love history, games, or just a good story, Echoes of History has something for you. Make sure to catch every episode by following Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

There's an American poet named William Stafford and he tells a story about, he has adult children, they're all home and it's like Thanksgiving or Christmas or something and 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 till like, you know, late at night. 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. That sort of last moment. Everything that comes after is for everyone else, but 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. Those moments, yeah. I mean, it's also music and art and anything that kind of can stop you in your tracks and make you think and marvel a little bit. But there is a sense of awe in love. Like that's what you're describing in that family setting. Yeah, the unspoken communication, the sense that you woke up exactly before, you know, there's just, there's something mystical and mysterious and as much a phenomena as flight

or, you know, 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 become sort of a nerd to it. But some of the most beautiful writings from the Stoics, Seneca writes these essays on grief. He, they survived, they're called constellations. He writes these letters, and I sort of reread them whenever someone I care about passed on. And 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.

You would want the memory of you to bring happiness. The logic of that is such a like a stoic way of thinking about it, but I think about that all the time. How would they want you to feel when you think of them? Think of them, exactly. And sadness is not even on the list of top 10 emotions that I would want my kids to think about if I was gone. Exactly.

And 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's, she continues to be criticized to this day because she grieved. So she was very melodramatic in her grief and it went on for a very long time and she didn't appear in public, but 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 parlor. 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 to know I forgive you and I love you. And what a gift. That's such a gift because 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, could this be the last, about growing older and should you grow older gracefully or disgracefully and the same old things enjoy every moment and so on.

And 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 minding 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. And it got me thinking about kind of the last time we ever kind of say or do something. You know, Elizabeth Strout wrote about it in Lucy by the Sea, you know, the last time you pick up your kid.

Yes. When is that? And then, 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 up, but there's also this grief because as great as my, you know, seven year old going on eight year old is the six year old version of him is gone 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. And so there is this kind of perpetual grief. There's a brilliant poem about how the seasons, you know, we think of the new season coming and how wonderful it is, the flowers or the whatever, but we're not thinking of the winter that's gone forever. And that there is kind of a sadness of the changing of seasons there too. 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 onto 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 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 bath and watching Netflix. And he was calling out to me like this. It 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. So, 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 gonna 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 raisin 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. But clearly for them, it's beyond fun. But instead of trying to understand why it's so fun, our impulse is to corral the fun and to suppress the fun. But then I'll get an image of, wait,

what's the Dr. Zeus 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 it's fun

because the consequences are not falling on them there, it's fun because the consequences are not falling on them. But you're focusing on the consequences and what you're not thinking about is that at some point it's gonna 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. Yeah. Being a parent, huh? Yeah. No, it's funny. I think one thing that's all sharing common, another story I added into 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. And he's writing a letter to Ezra Pound after, and he says, look, I know what you're gonna tell me,

which is that this is for the best and it's gonna force me to change and redo it all better. And he says, I know, but I'm not there yet. Yeah, right, give me some time. Yeah, everybody give me some time. Yeah. And I think it's that way with grief, it's that way with 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.

Later you're gonna 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 wanna 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 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, of course. So you read it more quickly. Yeah, just, I think you've just got a so-called land up. Yeah, no, 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 it's gone forever.

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. So you could answer emails or watch something on Netflix. Like 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 know, what you're gonna, how rarely is it ever for their benefit.

I tell myself, you have to go to bed, you know, what you're gonna, it's, I mean, it's not like they have a presidential debate the next morning, you know? Like, like they could be tired the next morning, who 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. 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. It's never important. And then you're rushing through a thing and you never get back. And now I'm getting, I have to remind them to say goodnight. Yeah. Because they like to go them to say good night. Yeah. Because they like to go in and like do their own thing.

There's a passage in Meditations where Marksrow says, you know, when you tuck your child in at night, you should say to yourself, they will not survive till the morning. And this is a man who buried six children. So I don't think he's saying this glibly. And I don't think he's trying to 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. It would not be to skip some of the pages in the book. 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'm like? I am getting it for him because or them, because I love them. And they are giving me a chance to do it again. 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, tap, tap. The first impulse is, God damn it.

And then the second impulse, 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 there's a reason why the 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. Yeah, yeah. What? Yeah. 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 you did that. You put me to sleep and you sit up here and ate ice cream. Yes, I do. That is right. But 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 valued me. I knew you never recognized 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 this, just so much love there, take that and keep going. Have you ever wondered who created that bottle of Sriracha that's living in your fridge? Or why nearly every house in America has at least one game of Monopoly? Introducing the Best Idea Yet, a brand new podcast

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Wondery plus it's just the best idea yet. What drove you to write about Grace? Two things. Um, 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 I still have people kind of coming up to me and talking about it and what she did,

the idea of like forgiveness when you really just seems impossible and actually absurd. Yeah. Um, loving people who are just complete jerks. Like she'd always be like, I'd be like, oh man, what do I do about this person at work? Like somebody 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 like love them. I'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. But then what would it do to people if you do that? In cases when you show mercy, 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. Like, and maybe we'll get to forgiveness, but it's not to say that you allow anyone to do anything and to the whole culture of impunity. But the other reason that forgiveness can be astonishing. So the other reason I want to write about it is because I've written so and thought so much about awe. And I know this is something you think about too, but it's, you know, that sense of being feeling small in the natural world, how psychologically healthy that is, that sense of being overcome, overwhelmed, like struck by something and realizing that there's a great, massive, marvelous 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 it about 2,600 people in across 26 countries to find out what was the most common experience of all. You 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 a 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. And I was really struck by that and I was 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, 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.

And it ends up changing venues. And so the company, it's a big company, they bring out 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. He calls him like a gorilla to his face. He just sees him as like a, just a buffoon. And every night 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. Oh. 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. 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. 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. It's any of the science, typically studies I've seen into that to show people are much more likely to do it themselves.

And all those studies are on moral elevation in, in workforces. And if you see and find out not in a way that trumpets it, Hey, guess what guys, I'm a grateful antiverser, 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. Yeah. And that's, that's really interesting because a lot of people see grace as

something nice and about being polite and not quite a hallmark car, but something kind of pretty and easy. And it is- 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.

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. And sometimes it's at cost to yourself. How many times should I forgive my brother? Seven times? No. Seventy times? No. Se times? No, 70 times 7.

Yes, actually. 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 is basically this idea, you were forgiven for everything. And so, you were given a gift, which means that you in turn have to give. 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, doesn't actually make sense. 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 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. 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. Well, 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, 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 there's the justice system 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. And 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 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. 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's 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 spent 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 system, 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 and 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 was the last things, what are the last words my daughter said before she died?

What are they? So this kind of complicated, but really quite amazing process actually, because when it works, you know, these two people staring at each other, trying to recognize harm caused and each other's humanity. It can also, 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 McGraw 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've 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. And she told me that she 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. Yeah. This is what happened to my body. This is what happened to my mind. this is what you did to me. Yeah. This is what happened to my body. This 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 it. 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. She 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 for listening, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. And before you go, would you tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey on Wondery.com slash survey.