Julia Baird (7:32)

Dakar 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 ore you would imagine. Like, what would you have said if.

Ryan Holiday (7:51)

It was, I don't know, a mountain.

Guest Speaker / Interviewee (7:52)

Or, you know, some. Some natural phenomenon, a Grand Canyon kind of a thing?

Julia Baird (7:56)

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 does it mean for people witnessing it? And yeah, to me, it's the very best of who we are.

Guest Speaker / Interviewee (8:43)

I was just thinking about that when I was reading this Lincoln book because there's this story. Lincoln's sort of an up and coming lawyer 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 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. He calls him like a gorilla to his face. He just sees him as like 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.

Julia Baird (9:23)

Right.

Guest Speaker / Interviewee (9:24)

And 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. 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. And 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.

Julia Baird (10:21)

It changes everyone who witnesses it. Yes, it's any of the scientific studies I've seen into that. Just show people are much more likely to do it themselves. And a lot 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 that someone in a position of leadership has been, you know, 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.

Ryan Holiday (10:53)

Yes.

Guest Speaker / Interviewee (10:54)

Yeah.

Ryan Holiday (10:54)

When.

Guest Speaker / Interviewee (10:54)

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.

Julia Baird (11:06)

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 card, but something kind of pretty and easy. And it is.

Guest Speaker / Interviewee (11:19)

Everyone appreciates it, celebrates it as it's happening.

Julia Baird (11:21)

Lovely.

Ryan Holiday (11:22)

Yes.

Julia Baird (11:22)

It's like puppies and Kleenex tissues. Right. But this is about something that's really hard to do, you know, to. 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.

Guest Speaker / Interviewee (11:36)

Yeah.

Julia Baird (11:36)

You know, and sometimes it's a cost to yourself.

Ryan Holiday (11:39)

Right.

Guest Speaker / Interviewee (11:40)

How many times should I forgive my brother? Seven times.

Ryan Holiday (11:43)

No.

Guest Speaker / Interviewee (11:43)

70 times. No, 70 times seven. And just the incredibleness of that, it's probably. I think that is the greatest concept of Christianity, that grace and forgiveness and.

Julia Baird (11:55)

Great. And at the heart of that is grace is done. Nothing you've done. You've done nothing to deserve it.

Ryan Holiday (11:59)

Yes.

Guest Speaker / Interviewee (12:00)

Well. Well, the idea that. To me, my understanding of Christianity is basically this idea of you were forgiven for everything, and so you were. So you were given a gift.

Julia Baird (12:09)

Yes, that's right.

Guest Speaker / Interviewee (12:10)

Which means that you, in turn, have to give.

Julia Baird (12:12)

Yeah.

Guest Speaker / Interviewee (12:12)

And that. That sort of obligation or that indebtedness.

Julia Baird (12:15)

Yeah.

Guest Speaker / Interviewee (12:16)

Like, you're a shitty person. You've done shitty things. So the idea that you get to. To hold that above someone else, that you get to hold something over someone else for having made a mistake or done right, you wrong or done the world wrong.

Julia Baird (12:30)

You owe me, buddy.

Guest Speaker / Interviewee (12:31)

That's a luxury that you're actually not ent.

Julia Baird (12:34)

Yeah. Which is amazing.

Guest Speaker / Interviewee (12:36)

Yes.

Julia Baird (12:37)

And. Yeah. Doesn't actually make sense. You know, and look, I have grown up, as we talked about with my mother, who talked a lot about forgiveness growing up, like, really being exposed to the idea that you just, you Forgive and forgive and forgive. 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.

Ryan Holiday (13:04)

Yes.

Julia Baird (13:04)

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. I don't need to move away from you. Forgiveness can sometimes be cutting ties and walking away from.

Guest Speaker / Interviewee (13:29)

Well, first off, it's the idea that you have competing and sometimes conflicting obligations.

Ryan Holiday (13:35)

To yourself, to your children.

Julia Baird (13:36)

That's right.

Guest Speaker / Interviewee (13:37)

To the person that comes after you. But also, I think what 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.

Ryan Holiday (13:52)

Required for us all to live together.

Guest Speaker / Interviewee (13:54)

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.

Ryan Holiday (14:08)

Accountable and how they're held accountable and.

Guest Speaker / Interviewee (14:10)

The whole system built around it is based on the statistics and, you know, 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.

Julia Baird (14:27)

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 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, 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.

Ryan Holiday (15:13)

Yeah.

Julia Baird (15:14)

So sometimes they want to know just a piece of information. Sometimes they want to know what's 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 McGrath. And her brother was killed when she was 24. He was 20. And it was killed by a friend who just shot him one night after they'd been playing at the pub and killed him. No explanation has ever been given. And she found herself, she was then heavily pregnant, consumed with rage about this. She was so furious about it, that. Consumed in a way that it took over her mind, it took over her body. She put on a lot of weight, she got diabetes, she got insomnia. Her father got very ill. It just infected this whole community, as these incidents and attacks and horrible things often do. 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. 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.

Ryan Holiday (16:39)

Yeah.

Julia Baird (16:40)

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

Ryan Holiday (17:13)

Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank.

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Ryan Holiday (18:22)

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