Have you ever been so deeply moved by witnessing an act of grace or moral beauty that it viscerally shook you? I remember one night in New York, at the height of the pandemic, when the city felt like the scariest place on earth. Every evening at 7pm, my windows would fly open and a thunderous roar would erupt across the streets as New Yorkers cheered, banged pots, and screamed their thanks for the healthcare workers risking everything for us. Just the sound of that collective gratitude would bring me to tears. In those moments of shared awe and elevation, I was reminded how grace cuts through hatred, restoring our belief in humanity’s highest potential. Have you felt that undeniable, physical uplift in the face of someone’s simple decency or profound mercy? If so, you know the power of grace.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could access that feeling, that state, more or less, on demand. In everyday life?
My guest today is Julia Baird, award-winning journalist, bestselling author, and host of the “Not Stupid” podcast. Julia has spent years studying and writing about one of life’s most profound yet often overlooked experiences – the mysterious force called grace. In her latest book, Bright Shining: How Grace Changes Everything, she takes us on an intimate exploration of grace through powerful narratives and fascinating research from the worlds of science, philosophy, and spirituality.
Julia’s personal journey through cancer, grief, and immense challenges gives her a unique lens into our shared human capacity for forgiveness, dignity, and what she calls “moral elevation.” Whether recounting her travels to witness bioluminescent life in the ocean depths or sharing incredible stories of people forgiving the unforgivable, Julia illuminates the paths that can lead us into more grace-filled lives and relationships. You may just feel that shiver of awe and elevation as we dive into the mysterious, beautiful, and perhaps most ordinary part of being human – grace.
You can find Julia at: Instagram | Episode Transcript
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Episode Transcript:
Julia Baird: [00:00:00] Or is not something beautiful and lovely. It makes us strong, it makes us strong. And it’s not just bungee jumping in the Grand Canyon, or big dramatic African safaris or deep sea diving. Although you can find it in all of those things, you can see it in your own potting beds. You could see it in the park down the street. If you’re watching like I am at the moment, there’s a little tree hollow where this little lorikeet parrots have just had little babies. I’m watching them every day, and you can see it in the extraordinary decency of a neighbour. It’s in ultimately expanding. It connects you to other people, and it is the very best of who we are.
Jonathan Fields: [00:00:41] So have you ever been so deeply moved by witnessing an act of grace or moral beauty that it viscerally shook you? I remember one night in New York, at the height of the pandemic, when the city felt like kind of the scariest place on Earth. Every evening at 7 p.m., my window and millions of other windows would fly open at a thunderous roar would erupt across the streets as New Yorkers cheered and banged pots and screamed their thanks for the health care workers risking everything for us. Just the sound of that collective gratitude would bring me to tears. And in moments of shared awe in elevation, I was reminded how grace cuts through hatred and suffering and fear, restoring our belief in humanity’s highest potential. So if you ever felt that undeniable physical uplift and psychological uplift in the face of someone’s simple decency or profound mercy, or an act of a complete stranger, maybe even you. If so, you know the power of grace. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could access that feeling, that state more or less on demand in everyday life? My guest today is Julia Baird, award-winning journalist, bestselling author and host of the Not Stupid podcast. Julia has spent years studying and writing about one of life’s most profound yet often overlooked experiences the mysterious force called grace. In her latest book, Bright Shining How Grace Changes Everything, she takes us on this intimate exploration of grace through powerful narratives and fascinating research from the world of science, philosophy and spirituality, and Julia’s personal journey through cancer, grief, and immense challenges. It also gives her a unique lens into our shared human capacity for forgiveness, dignity, and what she calls moral elevation. So whether recounting her travels to witness bioluminescent life in the ocean depths or sharing incredible stories of people forgiving the unforgivable. Julia really illuminates the past that can lead us into a more grace filled life and relationship with the world. You may just feel that shiver of awe in elevation as we dive into the mysterious, the beautiful, and perhaps most ordinary part of being human. Grace. So excited to share this conversation with you! I’m Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project.
Jonathan Fields: [00:03:02] On the inside of your left forearm, you have a tattoo with three French words, which translates roughly to an invincible summer, which is actually part of a line from a 1954 work from Camus Returned to Tipasa. The full line is in the middle of winter. I found there was in me an invincible summer. What does this mean to you?
Julia Baird: [00:03:26] I’m so impressed by this question. You’ve really done your research because I’ve never. I don’t think I’ve ever written about having that tattoo. It means to me that even in the most difficult times of my life, even in the most horrendous, bleak, kind of muddy, just dark zones, I have been constantly surprised to find that within me there is something that still hungers for light and for goodness and for all and for all the good stuff of life, all the best parts of being human. And that that drive in itself has lit me up. And that drive in itself has created a summer for me in my winters. So I wanted to have it tattooed and I mean the whole I’ve got a little oh, wait a minute. So I’ve got this funny elbow. Can you see it? Oh yeah, there we go. I wanted to have it there as well, because anyone who’s spent a lot of time in and out of hospitals knows that that is where you get punctured and bruised and cannulas going in and out at the end of surgeries, it’s often quite it’s a very like contested zone. And I wanted to remind myself of that anytime I was going in and out of hospital that I had that to hold on to.
Jonathan Fields: [00:04:35] Yeah. And for you, going in and out of hospital wasn’t just the sort of occasional annual update or physical there’s there is a very substantial winter for you and your reference set.
Julia Baird: [00:04:45] Yeah. That’s true. So in about about ten years ago I was diagnosed with a they thought it was ovarian cancer, but it’s a very kind of rare abdominal cancer. And the treatment for it is really quite brutal. They will, you know, like just go in and remove organs and pour hot chemo inside you into your abdomen and then, then then stitch you back up and kind of good luck. And it takes ages to come back to be able to walk and like eat and function again. So I’ve had that like four times now. So yeah. It led to fairly intense moments of reckoning for me.
Jonathan Fields: [00:05:26] But how amazing that you can now look down, just glance down at the inside of your left arm and see both the memory of of all of that. That is where so much of this, you know, happened. And then also that line is just the constant reminder. I also love that that’s actually the clothing line of a longer stanza in that particular work. The opening line is there is merely bad luck in not being loved. There’s misfortune in not loving. That line is actually a line that stayed with me for a long time.
Julia Baird: [00:05:56] Bad luck in not being loved and misfortune and not loving God. That’s true.
Jonathan Fields: [00:06:01] Yeah. And I feel like so many of us are experiencing some version of that in the world these days.
Julia Baird: [00:06:05] Yeah. Right. And why do you think that’s stayed with you?
Jonathan Fields: [00:06:08] I feel like so often we feel like the, the experience of, of loving and being loved is something that we’re constantly trying to wrangle, to lock down, to have some sense of control over. And, you know, the first part of it kind of acknowledges the fact that, you know what, you have some level of agency and control over you. And even there, you know, kind of ish.
Julia Baird: [00:06:31] Yeah.
Jonathan Fields: [00:06:32] Yeah, yeah. Right. But the rest of the world, the people around you, circumstances, you really don’t. And at the end of the day, you don’t want to as much as you think you do. But you do have agency over giving yourself to others, to causes, to ideas, to people, to pets, to the environment, whatever it is. And that that’s where. Because you have agency there. The misfortune is in not actually exercising that agency. And I feel like that’s been a really interesting, powerful reminder to me. I’m curious how it lands with you.
Julia Baird: [00:07:01] I agree with that. I mean, it reminds me instantly of the whole just the the tenet of stoicism that you can’t determine your circumstances, but you can determine how you respond to them. And I think that’s really what I’ve learned. And in a way, I have drawn from this. It’s called the Stockdale Paradox, which from a, um, Stockdale was a prisoner in Vietnam and was tortured in the Hanoi prison. You know, where, um, John McCain had been as well. And he wrote afterwards, and he was in the Air Force. So it was shot down. And he wrote afterwards about what it was that sustained him during that time. And he was very brutally treated. And he said, in a way, it was like a stubborn kind of optimism in the sense that he said the people who were simply optimistic were the ones that didn’t last. Will be out by Easter. And then they weren’t out. We’ll be out by Thanksgiving. And they weren’t. Or Christmas and they weren’t. And then the ones that were like, I am fully aware of the circumstances of I’m in. I’m not going to deny it. I’m not going to get out of it with like there’s some elements of like the positivity movement that that I think grate on some people because it’s like, just be cheerful and just look on the bright side and the.
Jonathan Fields: [00:08:06] Old toxic positivity.
Julia Baird: [00:08:07] Yeah, yeah. Like where you are can sometimes can be completely suck. You’ve lost, you know what? A dear partner has died or you’ve got a terrible diagnosis, but you can still hold on to the idea that somehow you will prevail, and that in the prevailing, you can point yourself to the good things. And I think that’s what I’ve been writing about for the last few years is like how in these times, I’ve just been so surprised about the things that have given me strength, not just have been nice to tinker in, not that are just optional extras, but these things are pillars of strength, like awe and wonder and grace being a form of awe.
Jonathan Fields: [00:08:42] Yeah, I know you. I think it was last year, or maybe it was actually a re-airing of a special that you did on hunting or. Yes. And I think I remember part of that was sort of looking for phosphorescent underwater life and things like that. Um, which I don’t know if you’ve read Matt Haig’s new book, The Life Impossible.
Julia Baird: [00:09:01] I haven’t yet.
Jonathan Fields: [00:09:01] No, you would enjoy it. There’s a reference to that experience of yours. Not to you, but to that, I think, and also the notion of awe and joy and grace. It’s, um. I found it really moving.
Julia Baird: [00:09:13] Oh, he was because. Because my last book was called Phosphorescence on Awe, wonder, and the things that Sustain You when the World Goes dark, which is why I became so. It was a metaphor for me about finding light in the dark, but I actually became obsessed with finding bioluminescence in the natural world, especially in the ocean. But yeah, he he read that book and he was very kind about it. So I’m a fan of his work.
Jonathan Fields: [00:09:35] Interesting. You may have inspired something in him.
Julia Baird: [00:09:38] We’ll see. I can’t claim anything, obviously.
Jonathan Fields: [00:09:41] As you shared. A lot of the writing that you’ve been doing recently is is really focused around it’s not sort of like this toxic positivity and like, oh, look at the bright side of everything, the silver lining. But it’s this notion of, can we find grace no matter what’s going on around us. So I think in opening curiosity for me is and this is the entire focus of your new book, you know, how do you define grace in this modern world that we live in? And, and also, why do you think it seems or feels so elusive to us today?
Julia Baird: [00:10:11] I think in part, the reason it’s elusive seems elusive today is because of the nature of politics today and the politics that is playing on fears and anxieties and because of the nature of algorithms. So people literally making money from us, being outraged and anxious and afraid. So we see it in our communities. You’ll see it from the local firefighter or from a paramedic or a nurse, or people working with those with disabilities, or in aged care homes. It is all around us in blood donors, people that every couple of weeks will go and have someone stick a needle in their arm and pull out their very blood, not because they know a person that needs it, not because they can direct it. Going to someone they really like. It could go to a complete jerk, you know, someone that they disapprove of or not a number of levels, but they do it because there’s a human need for it. And I think fundamentally grace is about that. It’s not about considering the recipient as someone who’s worthy, but you’re doing it because of the importance of giving people the benefit of the doubt, of allowing people to see people’s humanity of mercy, not merit of ways of breaking a cycle which is just about vengeance and retribution. It’s about stepping back and seeing the entire context in which a person has operated and what might have led them to that point which has harmed you or which has hurt you.
Julia Baird: [00:11:37] It is sometimes forgiving the unforgivable, loving the unlovable. I think the idea that it just goes beyond the eye for an eye, or the fact that someone merits or someone deserves something. We know grace when we see it. For many people, grace is is a touch of the divine. For other people, it is the very best of humanity which somehow transcends the everyday but is often contained in the everyday. You know, Marilynne Robinson called it, you know, like a reservoir of goodness and kind of beyond the everyday, which is, you know, the way that we can treat each other. You do hear Grace spoken about sometimes I heard it I jumped out of my seat when I heard both Barack Obama and Michelle Obama used that word at the Democratic National Convention, and I think they were trying to refer to the idea of caring for your neighbors, of respecting the fact that people can disagree with you. We have to accept that we can disagree with people. Sometimes people can have really good values, good intentions, and end up at different points politically or even the same values as you end end up at different points completely. So I think those kinds of understandings would kind of unknot some of the heavily tangled ways we have of speaking to each other now, which can be very destructive, very detrimental and very negative now.
Jonathan Fields: [00:12:56] I mean, that lands in a really powerful way. You know, I often hear the phrase giving grace as if this is something. It’s almost like an offering, a gift, a blessing, something that you’re giving to someone else. But at the same time, what I hear you describing, and this has been my experience, I think, as well, is that grace is also a state. It’s a feeling within you, you know, like when you feel like you are experiencing grace. I’m curious, what do you feeling?
Julia Baird: [00:13:21] It’s a lift. Yeah. The studies that have been done on this, on the physical impacts of people witnessing an act of moral beauty, of great decency or courage or ability or generosity. I mean, sometimes you can see it when you’re watching the Paralympics or when you’re watching people overcome incredible hurdles. But when you see that, there’s a couple of observations. The first is it’s infectious. It makes people more likely to do that and behave in ways themselves, to try to act, to alleviate other people’s suffering. The other finding is that it’s around the idea of moral elevation. So you watch it and you see something good happen to something else that they’re not, again, that they’re not necessarily deserving. And once you see that act of goodness, it can affect your heart rate. It can, as can forgiveness and your contentment, your capacity for your level of happiness and satisfaction with your relationships. People say to me, and it’s also the ineffable. There’s also I don’t know what that word is like. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to trying to put my finger on like, mysterious ideas. Like when you say something, it’s like that. It’s just it lifts you up.
Julia Baird: [00:14:37] And in a way that’s hard to describe. When I first started writing my aura, I was like, what is that feeling I get when I’m ocean swimming and the edge of a very vast ocean? What does that feeling when you’re walking through a forest or mountains where you are, or when you’re sitting on a hill and looking up at a canopy of stars? There’s something beyond. And that’s what you get with Grey’s or across Dacher Keltner from the University of California, Berkeley, did a study on. It was 2600 people across 26 countries. They got them to keep diaries of their awe moments, and tried to find out what the most common experience of all was. And I really, genuinely would have bet my house on, um, it being nature. And obviously that was a really strong theme. But the number one thing people said was seeing one of those acts in another person we experience, or that sense of being stopped in our tracks and actually comforted. I find it very comforting to know there’s people like this in the world and that people love like this and are selfless, like this, and it kind of makes it worth going on.
Jonathan Fields: [00:15:41] No, I love that and such a fan of Docker’s work as well. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. It’s interesting you referenced, you know, we are we have this human drive to try and quantify, to try and define, to try and make tangible the intangible. You reference this in a really kind of like interesting way that I had never heard before. But maybe this is maybe I’ve been living with my head in the sand for for years. Early in the book, with this conversation around an experiment that was done to try and determine the weight of the soul, to literally quantify the weight of the soul. Take me there.
Julia Baird: [00:16:19] Okay, so I love the idea of this experiment. It was more than a century ago. It was 1907, and there was a Boston doctor, and his name was Duncan MacDougall and he wanted to work out. Did human beings have a soul and could you actually measure it? So he tried to measure people at the point of dying, like he went to nursing homes and aged care places and would, would put someone on the scale just before they died and just after a very difficult thing to actually pull off. And one person actually died on the scales. He then determined in his first kind of batch of reporting that there was a difference, that the body was 21.3g lighter after the person had died. So he decided that was the weight of a soul. Now, even at the time, the other physicians and medical researchers were horrified by the inexactness and the, I think, sloppy, you know, method by which this man had claimed this. It was it was argued about in the New York Times. And that number has held, you know, held on in the popular imagination. You’ll hear in films 21g. I kind of like his imagination and his audacity. I think it’s more of an imaginative enterprise than a scientific one. He did then do it with dogs, by the way, and he found no difference. And that was another scandal, because that mean dogs don’t go to heaven, which we all know is not true. So, um, yeah, I love that experiment.
Jonathan Fields: [00:17:48] It is fascinating how, you know, like we’re just trying to look at everything around us and say, like, how can I lock this down? How can I measure it? In the conversation around Grace, though, I’m curious why you felt like this was an interesting piece of the conversation.
Julia Baird: [00:18:01] I mean, I’d always been fascinated by that experiment, and because I wanted to write, actually, I was writing about nurses and I was writing, and I’ve had I’ve watched nurses. I’ve been in medical environments so much. And you see, you know, blood and gore and pain and distress and people with dementia struggling. You see people come in with, you know, ice problems, all kinds of addictions. I’ve just watched this for years. I watched nurses be assaulted and be called all kinds of names. And I’ve watched their care, their tender, relentless care for people they don’t know and may never see again or will likely never see again for complete strangers. And the idea that you treat a person in front of you, not just like as a lump of flesh, but as a soul. If you don’t like the word soul, then just like a deeply human person with their own needs and desires and and there was something that happened during the pandemic. You know, the pandemic was a time when we all stopped briefly and applauded people who all the time put their own lives on the risks, who face, you know, like deadly infections and are often poorly paid and are keeping us alive. And I thought that was great, the sound of applause around the world. And I kind of would like it to continue at like 6:00 every night if we could just applaud the people in our in, um, who are staffing our, our hospitals and care homes. But there was one example that really, really struck me, and it was in Brazil. And we’re at a time when, you know, it was really raging out of control. Covid and the medical system was overwhelmed, the hospitals were overwhelmed. And I don’t know if you remember how many nurses were actually quite traumatized by the fact that people were coming there and really, really ill and some of them dying, and they couldn’t have their loved ones with them, and they just found it was so heartbreaking to watch.
Julia Baird: [00:19:54] And there were these two nurses in Sao Paulo, Brazil, who decided they talked about it on their lunch break, about how could how could they do something about this? And they got these rubber gloves and filled them with warm water. So they tied one on the bottom here and one on the top there, and kind of knotted it together. So it was like a warm hand over the patients. And they noticed when they did that there was immediate improvement in the patient’s vital signs and their blood profusion and in various things, and they replicated it elsewhere and in other hospitals. And the same thing happened again. And that to me, that was just a rubber glove filled with water. But it was an act of love, actually, from a stranger to show you love. And when I contacted them, I managed to track those nurses down and they were like, we realized that that person was someone’s mother, niece, daughter, friend, and they were loving them in that moment. And then how fascinating that that showed up and there was a physical response to it. People’s health improved when they had that warm hand on their own. This a warm, warm glove on their own. So that to me is part of the the idea of the soul. You’re looking at a person and you are not just trying to bring them back to life, but you are showing them the kind of care and the kind of love that you would want someone that you loved. It was desperate or afraid or stuck somewhere.
Jonathan Fields: [00:21:25] Mhm.
Julia Baird: [00:21:26] To be shown.
Jonathan Fields: [00:21:27] Yeah. I wonder if in, in a way the experience of grace is being able to close the gap between how you’re living your life and sort of like a more authentic expression of that soul, self, whatever it is that you believe is deepest inside of you. It’s interesting. I was in New York in 2020 before we headed out to the mountains, and during the absolute worst part of things, when New York was the scariest place on the planet to be. And, you know, I was one of those people where at 7:00 every night, the windows flew open across the entire city and everyone was screaming and banging pots. And I recorded a bunch of evenings of that. I can’t listen to that recording now without just absolutely weeping.
Julia Baird: [00:22:08] Ryan.
Jonathan Fields: [00:22:09] It’s not the sound. It brings me back to this reminder that even in the absolute most terrifying moments of our lives, people who lived in the city generally didn’t talk to each other. You didn’t look at each other and like walking down the street. New York is not a city where you’re like, hey, how are you doing when you’re walking down the street? You live your own lives. And yet, in this scariest of moments, somehow millions of people came together not just to celebrate the fact that we’re all here doing this together, but also that there are people who are also being out there in service of us right now and so powerful, you know. And that, to me, is that’s grace also. You know, like the reminder of that feeling is like, oh, yes. Oh, right, right, right, right. That’s what it’s about.
Julia Baird: [00:22:53] I’ve got goosebumps in you talking about that. And goosebumps, by the way, is one way in which scientists measure grace. It’s just the beauty in that. And it’s the recognition of all of those people and all everything, as you’re saying, that they were serving us at that time, but also the commonality that a whole bunch of people coming together to applaud for all of our differences, like even singing in a choir can be kind of an amazing experience of awe again, because we’re so used to being discordant. To come together and be in harmony is because, like, a profoundly moving experience.
Jonathan Fields: [00:23:29] Yeah. So, agree. You’ve used the word awe a lot and almost interchangeably with grace. What’s your sense of how they relate to each other?
Julia Baird: [00:23:37] Well, so if we think of awe as being something that stops you in your tracks and makes you think about the world, makes you realize we’re part of something much bigger, it makes you aware of kind of beauty and marvels. Experiencing awe regularly is something that research shows makes you calmer, more content, more altruistic, more kind of conscious of being inhabitants of the earth. And I have just been again and again in my kind of darker moments, being reminded of how important it is to pursue and wonder as part of that, as a way that’s not an optional extra. Like, you know, you might see some beautiful things when you go on holidays. That’s really great. Or, you know, when you go on a walk in the morning, you might catch the sunrise or the sunset at night. But a way of building this deliberately into your life is, like, so psychologically soothing and important that I have clung on to it like a life raft when I’ve been, you know, not sure if I should, what reason there is to go on, or if I can handle the pain anymore. And it’s like, you know, Rachel Carson, who wrote The Silent Spring, she said the work that she was most proud of was an essay she wrote in 1956, which was about how to teach kids how to wander. And she talks about going, you know, going around the woods with her nephew Roger, who was then four years old and, you know, shining lights into rock pools at night and instilling that sense of wonder.
Julia Baird: [00:25:06] And there’s just a phrase in this thing. She says, if she could be a godmother, if she could whisper into the fairy godmother of all the children in the world, she would say, please instill in them a sense of wonder that’s so indestructible that it will last against their whole lives and against, you know, sterile preoccupations, so that we will not become alienated from the sources of our strength. And that phrase has never left me because I then realized awe is not something beautiful and lovely. It makes us strong, it makes us strong. And it’s not just like bungee jumping in the Grand Canyon. Not that anyone does that, but if they did, or big dramatic African safaris or, you know, deep sea diving, although you can find it in all of those things, you can see it by watching in your own potting beds. You could see it in the park down the street. If you’re watching like I am at the moment, there’s a little tree hollow where this little lorikeet parrots have just had little babies. I’m watching them every day, and you can see it in the extraordinary decency of a neighbor. And That’s what I see them having in common. It’s in ultimately expanding. Ultimately, it connects you to other people and it is the very best of who we are.
Jonathan Fields: [00:26:22] Do you have a sense for grace being something that exists within you or between you and others?
Julia Baird: [00:26:30] I think it’s probably both. I think we witness it when someone is acting that way towards another person who might not merit it. And then I think you carry away the results of it. And I think sometimes you might not necessarily even call it that. Like, I don’t even want to have a limited prescribed definition. I know where I’ve found it. I know where I’ve seen it after meditating on it for a couple of years. But I really want to start conversations about where other people see it. And I was just really struck by like, it’s such a big thing to experience, grace to see it. And we don’t really talk about it enough. Like, what does it look like? What happens to you when you kind of come across it? How do we get our kids to not just be good and kind, but we really be the decent person who doesn’t need to go in there and break a break up a fight, who doesn’t need to forgive someone who’s, you know, done whatever to them, but will and then can actually transform a whole culture and a whole group of people. And I think the infectious, contagious nature of it is really important. But to your question. So when I think about so I spent quite a bit of time with people who’d gone through restorative justice programs.
Julia Baird: [00:27:40] So the person who caused harm with the person, the harm was caused to, and there’s a whole bunch of provisos around that the person who caused harm has to have some kind of contrition and remorse. It’s really all about serving the needs of the victim, who often doesn’t feel served by the justice system. And there was one woman who, when she was 24 years old, she got a phone call in the middle of the night from her father, saying that her her brother had died, had been killed by his best friend, just shot in the chest. She was mortified. There was a court case. That guy went off to jail. No reason was ever given for the shooting. It just happened one night. They were drinking at a pub and she became consumed by that. She was eaten up by hate for that guy, for desire for revenge. Over a ten year period, she had a lot of health problems. She started sleepwalking. She couldn’t sleep properly. At other times, she got diabetes. Her father had a lot of a series of bad health problems. It was really kind of corrosive. And she told me that she would be looking at a sunset and thinking about ways she could murder this guy.
Julia Baird: [00:28:45] And she eventually went to sit down opposite him ten years after it had happened. And she was able to say, this is what you did to me and my health. This is what you did to my father and his health. This is what you did to my brother’s son, who was just a toddler when he lost his dad, and she said that when she was doing it, suddenly, part of the way through it, she kind of lifted up and looked around because unconsciously, because she felt like something had been lifted from her. And she said to me that what she felt like she was doing was wrapping up everything he did to her and her brother, and just putting it in a suitcase and leaving it at his feet. And it was now his. And she was terrified that she wouldn’t be able to love anymore, and especially her grandchildren, because to her now, love was associated with loss. And she told me that after that she doesn’t know, doesn’t know what exactly happened. But that changed her life. And then she’s now is able to really love and dote on her grandkids. And so that’s an example of something happening between people. But her walking away and holding onto it herself.
Jonathan Fields: [00:29:50] The whole experience of restorative justice, I think I’m deeply fascinated by that as well. And it’s sort of morphed and taken on different names and different approaches, at least in the US these days. But it does feel like it is a blend of between others and then within us, and it almost feels like the experience, the interactive experience that generates is like the match that lights the fire of grace within us. You know, it’s almost like all loads the bow, which is the big inhale like air. And then Grace is grace releases it. Grace is the.
Julia Baird: [00:30:23] Oh that’s good, I like that.
Jonathan Fields: [00:30:26] And so you can see how there’s that relationship there like the dynamic and how it almost.
Julia Baird: [00:30:30] Stopping and then the giving.
Jonathan Fields: [00:30:32] Right. And how it almost has to involve other people, but then it has to land within you and somehow release something.
Jonathan Fields: [00:30:38] Yeah. It’s interesting. You referenced also, you know, so much of this is about both experiencing things out in the world, but also even witnessing. And even you mentioned earlier the notion of blood donors, which you write about in the book, you know, which is these are people who are showing up, they at least legally in this country, you can’t know who this is going to, you know.
Jonathan Fields: [00:30:59] And yet you show up and you give something that is within your body, you know, to someone else, and there’s no rational basis to do this. You’re not getting paid for it. You’re not getting compensated for your time. Nobody’s giving you like $20 for every pint that you get a.
Julia Baird: [00:31:14] Milkshake or a coffee. Yeah,
Jonathan Fields: [00:31:15] Right. Exactly. But but, you know, it says something that there is something within us. There’s like, something that says, I want to in some way do something good and in a way where I have no idea who the good is going to to land on. But I just I want to be a link in that chain.
Julia Baird: [00:31:35] Yeah. And it’s one of the examples. That’s right. That that in itself, exactly as you’ve described it, it’s quite miraculous. And I spoke to some blood donor researchers who were like, we actually don’t know. One of the mysteries for us is why people do it. Because, you know, you go and ask, you have to travel somewhere. Again, the needle, you get asked really intrusive questions. And yet, like thousands upon thousands of people around the world doing it and many more than that. And without knowing where it ends up, I think for introverts, I’ve often found that’s a really good way that they want to give. They want to volunteer or give back to the community. But like, you know, knocking on doors or being part of something public is harder. So they’re happier to do that. But I’ve been the recipient of blood donations myself, like many times now, often due to blood loss in surgery. And I remember the first time I got it and I was I had a nurse whispering in my ear all the time. It was so strange, actually. She started whispering about writing and like my purpose and how important this was. And I don’t know, it was this kind of really intense moment. And then I had been so depleted and so exhausted. And then I kind of came to it was like a shot to the chest, you know, I remember how much stronger I felt afterwards and the the thought that someone else’s blood, their blood was running through my veins. It was such a wild thing. And I really like to honor those people who spend decades upon decades. I met super donors who do it, have done it every two weeks for 50 years, who plan their holidays around it, who make sure that wherever they’re going to be every two weeks, they’ll donate. And I think that is a beautiful and often unsung gesture.
Jonathan Fields: [00:33:11] Yeah, it says something about us, I think, just as a species also. There is some wiring. There is. Maybe it gets short circuited by, you know, like expectations or just, you know, the culture of society or whatever it is. But there’s something deep within us that wants to be a part of that sort of like chain of generosity. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. One of the other things that you explore, I thought was really interesting in the context of grace was kind of the notion of risk and impermanence. And to tee it up, you bring back that that myth that we all heard as a kid, you know, like the Icarus story, but you invite us to kind of rethink what that really means.
Julia Baird: [00:33:51] I really love this poem by Jack Gilbert is his name. And it was about it’s kind of retelling the idea of Icarus also from the perspective of relationship. And he says in it we forget that before Icarus fell, he flew. Before Icarus fell, he was just coming to the end of his triumph. And I thought about that in the perspective of relationships. And we often say, if a relationship didn’t last, then it was failed or doomed, or it’s always this kind of negativity around it. And ultimately, sure, some relationships can have unpleasant ends and some can come to a natural end, but then why are we always focusing on the end instead of these beautiful few years that you can have? Before that? And I wrote about a former partner of mine who died in a plane crash and coming to terms with that grief, because it had happened about a year and a half after we broke up. And that sense of he was such a joyful and positive person, and I hated that. Obviously, the way he died. He had so much more of his life to live. But I wanted to also, in that grief and remembering him, to remember that we flew and how important that is to honour kind of previous relationships and not always see them as as failures. Sometimes relationships go for finite periods of time. And that’s kind of okay. So yeah, it was the poem that really got me thinking about how we sometimes frame relationships, or how often we frame it as just purely negative.
Jonathan Fields: [00:35:22] It also it’s a reframe on, to a certain extent, the just the notion of our willingness to take risks and a willingness to be bold and also sometimes how we’re punished for those to be like realistic and practical. And this is another thing that you actually subtly point out, especially like depending on who you are, like what gender you identify as, what culture you’re growing up in, you know, and that this can sometimes this can sometimes either enable or limit our ability to step into space and to be bold and to be risky and to state our minds and to actually do the things we want to do in the world versus saying, no, that’s not appropriate. And I wonder if that stifling within whether it’s a family culture or local culture, political culture, whatever it may be, limits our access to experience everything we’ve been talking about, to experience or to experience grace, like when we’re not allowed to show up in that way and risk revealing ourselves, risk bringing ourselves to the world. Does that also limit our capacity to experience awe and grace?
Julia Baird: [00:36:20] Um, I think there’s probably really something in there about being open to being able to make mistakes. If we allow other people to try things and make mistakes like genuine mistakes, if someone I don’t know does something cruel and vicious deliberately and then says it was a mistake, well, we know it’s not. But there are a lot of people who do actually make mistakes in public life, especially say and do the wrong thing. And we need to be able to properly assess which ones of those matter. Otherwise, if they all matter, then we lose our capacity to judge fully, I think. And that’s the idea of being the man or the woman in the arena, right? The person that is that is in there absolutely having a crack at it. And we often forget just the virtue of trying. So I think that we always have to be cautious around a censorious culture developing, around which everyone always has to be perfect. I mean, I’m always tearing my hair out about it a bit because I’ve I’m also a biographer. I spent a years writing a biography of Queen Victoria, so to spend that amount of time really thinking about a person and who were they and how do we assess them? How do you assess a life? And she could be completely cruel to a kid and beautifully generous to a household aid, all in the one day.
Julia Baird: [00:37:37] She could be capricious. She could be funny. She could be selfish. She could be reflects the attitudes of her time, but also be progressive on some, but be really strange on the others. So you’re constantly needing to look at a whole person before you completely dismiss them and write them off, because you’ve got to understand how strange attitudes form and what happens to them over a lifetime. Do people change? What makes people change? I don’t know. Mike, do you know what I mean? Like, I could talk about this for such a long time because I’m so interested in history. But not enough history informs our current debates. When we think about who we want as a leader, some of our greatest leaders have been deeply flawed. So what do we accept and what don’t we? And how do we? And do we ask for leaders who have a real fundamental goodness and decency to them? Is that what we want? Because I think that a lot of people really do, and we need to work out how to kind of demand that, I think.
Jonathan Fields: [00:38:27] And at the same time accept that people are really complicated.
Julia Baird: [00:38:30] Totally.
Jonathan Fields: [00:38:31] This is I guess this was a couple years back. Now I had the chance to sit down with Daniel Kahneman, who sadly has now passed, and he was telling me the story of how he he was like a Jewish kid growing up in Nazi-occupied Paris. And he was 5 or 6 years old, walking home from his place a couple blocks or from a friend to. And it was after dark. He wasn’t supposed to be out when he was supposed to be out. He was supposed to be wearing a sweater with, you know, a star on it. But he turned it inside out and he’s walking down the street and he turns the corner and he sees coming in his same direction, an SS officer. And he’s six years old. But he kind of knows what this means. But he’s kind of trying to just, you know, stay calm, breathe and like, get home. He walks kind of toe to toe with the officer who looks down at him, bends down, scoops him up, shows him a picture of his son like, pass him on his head and just like gives him a smile and says like, you know, like go on your way. And he credits that moment. He credits that moment to a certain extent, with his just instant understanding of the complexity of people that led to this astonishing, like Nobel winning career in psychology and just human behavior.
Julia Baird: [00:39:35] Yes.
Jonathan Fields: [00:39:36] But it is so interesting. We’d love to simplify people. So this is another thing you write about under this. Like, like fascinating word sonder, right? You know, this understanding that everyone’s life is so complex. Yeah. And yet we really don’t enjoy allowing space for that until unless and until we’re kind of forced to.
Julia Baird: [00:39:54] Mhm. Yeah. And I think it’s really it’s very dangerous. It’s very narrowing. And it means that if we’re savaging everyone who appears in public without really discretion for anything they’ve ever done, I mean, I’m not, I’m not talking about like corruption and so on here then we are creating a climate in which the only people who can really prosper in public life are full blown narcissists who don’t care and don’t need to be accountable and are immune to that kind of criticism. I haven’t seen the figures in the States, but I know that, like, there’s a lot of people turning away from public life and leaving their jobs because of threats, because of violence, because of, you know, I hosted a TV show for a long time, and there were a lot of people, especially people of color, especially women, First Nations, people that were really loath to come on because the level of abuse they would get simply for popping their heads up. And then there goes to the question of how people are judged for what they do. And as you’ve said before, that’s exacerbated if you’re all of those things as well. And if we look at female politicians, which I’ve done a lot of academic research on, the question isn’t whether or not they’ve done something wrong. It’s a question is how harshly they’re judged for it and what the consequences are deemed to be. So that’s a long winded way of answering your question about I think that’s right.
Jonathan Fields: [00:41:15] It also touches us into the notion of the relationship between grace and forgiveness. And we’re not saying, you know, especially with what you were talking about, I don’t think either of us is arguing that there shouldn’t be accountability for certain behaviour. Of course there should be. That’s not what we’re saying. But at the same time, how do you do this dance of understanding and acknowledging the complexity of individuals, of the human condition, of the fact that we all have, you know, we have the good wolf and the bad wolf inside of us. You know, the classic, you know, who wins, the one you feed. And then when there are things done that lead to estrangement or harm, how do we you know, and I would I would argue and I would imagine you would too, that like in those moments, often grace leaves the building and we feel like zero access to it. But like, is there a way that we invite it back? And this kind of speaks to, you know, the example that you were sharing earlier, the restorative justice example where ten years later, this this woman went back, but what role, if any, then does the experience of forgiveness play in all of this?
Julia Baird: [00:42:18] That’s a very good question. And I really struggled with forgiveness when writing this book. Like, I really I read everything I could, and I thought about it so much because I was conflicted, because I’ve grown up with the value of forgiveness and knowing how important it is. My mother was a very strong advocate. She spoke about forgiveness a lot. I’m sure she forgave me for a bunch of things. You know, like. And I can see how powerful that can be. But at the same time, as a reporter, I’ve seen a lot of time reporting on domestic violence cases and sexual assault cases. And I have seen how forgiveness can be weaponized even broadly, you know, more broadly, culturally that like that you need to move on and you need to, you know, forgive them. And it’s just a guy being a guy or he just has a temper or what did you do to upset him? And I think that there are different ways of thinking about forgiveness because someone who’s a complete psychopath, for example, then there’s no like, you just need to cut them off. There’s no sitting and repairing. This is a person who just simply kind of wants to harm you. And I think we do need to challenge a culture in which there have been many crimes that have long just been tolerated, and there’s been a culture of impunity.
Julia Baird: [00:43:25] So I think for people who go through that, it’s their own experience of self-preservation and then trying to work out what they want to do with that anger. Some people talk about it an unburdening or a severing or whatever. But when forgiveness can happen, it can be a really miraculous thing, I think. I spoke to a man called Chris Carrier. He’s from Texas, and he. I spoke to a man called Chris Carrier. He’s from Texas. When he was a kid, he was abducted from his as he was coming home from school. And he got off his bus about 8 or 9 years old, and someone came up to him and said, I’m going to host a birthday party for your dad. I work with him. Can you come and help me get decorations? And he led this kid off, took him to his home, put a pick through him, and then took him out to the Everglades and shot him and left him there for dead. And meeting Chris now as an adult is an amazing thing, because he just radiates this warmth and generosity of spirit. And he talks a lot about forgiveness because what happened was when he like, they could never find that guy because who left him there for dead.
Julia Baird: [00:44:38] Four days later, people found him and he had cigarette burns along his little young body because people were trying to work out if he was dead or alive. He couldn’t pick this guy in a line up because he was wearing a baseball cap at the time and had partially shielded his face. So he grew up knowing that this person was in his neighborhood with that fear. I mean, now his face is still scarred a couple of decades afterwards. Chris is now married. He’s got kids. He gets a call from the detective running the case saying, we’ve that guy that we thought might have done something to you. He is in an aged care home now and he is. He’s confessed. Would you like to accept that confession? And he said, yes, I would. And he went in and he said he walked into the nursing home. And there was a little guy weighed nothing, kind of wizened, close to death, no family or friends, and Chris had taken a friend in with him and the friend said, do you remember? At first he was kind of denying it, and he said, do you remember leaving a kid for dead in the Everglades? And he said, yes, I did.
Julia Baird: [00:45:42] And he said, what would you like to say to that person if he’s standing here right now, as Chris is? And he said, I want to say I’m sorry. And then just started to cry. And Chris said, okay, I want you to know that I forgive you. And he visited him every kind of couple of days until his death, which was only a couple of weeks later, bringing him his favorite treats, smoked fish. He brought him, he read to him, I think maybe he prayed with him. And he said to me that what he wanted to do was show his kids that there could be another way to break cycles of violence and vengeance, and that it wasn’t separate to justice. He’s like, I wish that guy had gone to jail. He totally should have gone to jail. That’s not about letting him off the hook. That’s about, I think, seeing an old man frail towards the end of his life and saying, okay, and when you speak to Chris and you see the kind of the generosity of his spirit and his openness, it makes you just want to be more like him. You can see this is someone that has relinquished what hatred can do to you.
Jonathan Fields: [00:46:47] Mhm.
Julia Baird: [00:46:48] It’s quite hard to imagine isn’t it.
Jonathan Fields: [00:46:50] I mean that’s the whole thing. I’m sitting here thinking I’m like I don’t think I could ever do that. You know, and I would imagine a lot of people are thinking the same thing, whether it’s you, whether it’s someone you love, like when you’re on Chris’s side of it, like I hear stories like that and I’m like, that is astonishing and gorgeous and impossible.
Jonathan Fields: [00:47:10] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Julia Baird: [00:47:13] Yeah, I get it. But I think that we hear a lot about retribution. We hear about people exacting revenge. I mean, like, every second Hollywood movie is all about that. We don’t hear about those stories. We don’t balance the ledger with there possibly being another way which Chris says was best for him and which a lot of people are interested in listening about. And I wonder if it’s because it seems rare. And again, I’d like to I think some people, people make mistakes a bit when they talk about grace, in the sense that I’ve noticed people thinking it’s very gendered, like this is just something women are told to do, to be polite and to be nice and, you know, the hallmark card thing or that once you decide, oh, I want that in my life, I’m going to live that way, that it’s therefore complete. And it’s therefore easy as opposed to, you know what, I struggle to forgive, but I might nudge my way towards that. I might try to work out where they come from, you know, maybe I won’t forgive them, but I’m not going to try to kick them in the leg every time I walk past them. I don’t know, do you know what I mean? There’s different ways of shifting and moving back from that.
Jonathan Fields: [00:48:15] Do you have a sense for whether what’s spinning in my head is I’m wondering, you know, like if we have endured harm or grief, for that matter, if, um, and oftentimes those happen at the same time. Like if you oftentimes if you experience harm, you’re grieving the loss of a state that, you know, that used to be that may never be recoverable. I wonder if in some way that unless and until we find a way to release the traumatic burden, the internal, the psychological burden of that harm or that grief, and I’m not saying forget about it or just like, I don’t believe that, but but move forward with it, but integrate it in a way that unless and until we can figure that out, that we don’t have full access to our ability to experience grace in the same way or in the same depth anymore, or do you think we can still carry that and still be able to step into all the other parts of life and still fully embrace and experience grace?
Julia Baird: [00:49:17] Yeah, I think that I don’t think you ever kind of reach a state where you’ve perfected any of that, and therefore I agree with you about not forgetting it. We are designed by evolution to recognize when harm has occurred to us. If you’ve put your hand on a boiling hot plate, you’ll know not to put it there again. We’re meant to learn from harm caused to us and hurt caused to us by people. But I do think this, as you’ve said, there’s something very important in making sure that that doesn’t become a burden to you. So when we talk about Debbie McGrath leaving the suitcase at the murderers feet, leave it there. Make sure it’s not something that you carry around that becomes a heaviness or a weight or a hate that you can separate yourself from what someone else has done to you.
Jonathan Fields: [00:50:01] It’s like I almost wonder if, like, if forgiveness is something that feels in some way accessible to you in your heart, if like, it’s less about what the gift that you’re giving to the other person, it’s more about being able to maybe crack the door open to grace in the experience, in your own experience, a little bit more than maybe you could while you’re still carrying it.
Julia Baird: [00:50:21] I think that’s true. And if someone sees you acting in that way, they’re probably possibly more likely to be doing that themselves. You know, the witnessing part is a really big thing. Can I just say something very this is going to seem very obvious. And since I’ve been trying to forgive harder since writing this book, because I think it is really important and obviously my own, I’ve not written this saying I’m an avatar of grace. So the other day I was saying to my dad something about, oh, this jerk, he couldn’t get stuffed. And dad’s like, oh yeah, great, put that in your book. That’s nice.
Jonathan Fields: [00:50:55] It’s like busted. Thanks, dad.
Julia Baird: [00:50:58] And the one thing, and it sounds so simple, I know, but the one thing I’ve found really helpful every time someone drives me crazy is to just consciously make sure I sit and think about them. But where are they coming from? Where is this coming from? How do we get to the point when they’re doing that? I would, I’m very far from someone like John Lewis who spoke about the form of congressman, civil rights leader, who spoke about walking down those the streets on his civil rights marches. And he would look at the faces of people contorted with hate along the way, and he would look at them and say, what? What happened to you? What happened? Like what happened? You were a baby once. You were someone’s child. Like, how do we get to this position of hate? And I have actually found that really beneficial to just sit and go, okay, why is it they’re responding in this way? And and where is that person actually at? Even if it doesn’t get you to a point of like, you know, complete absolution, it nudges you to a place where you can let go of it a bit.
Julia Baird: [00:52:01] It becomes less about you and more about where they are. And I do think it’s also a practice. I speak to a man called Danny Abdullah. He had three of his young children and a niece killed. They were out at night. They just went out to get an ice cream. And a driver came along who was completely intoxicated and ran them over, and his grief was immense. His family’s grief obviously was immense, and he and his wife decided quite quickly, and people were quite unnerved by how quickly and astonishingly they would publicly say they forgave this man. And he said to me, it’s not like you wake up like. It’s not like you say, I’m going to forgive them. And then that’s done. Like, you will wake up with that rage and that pain still, and you almost have to decide to live that way. And some days you’ll be able to do it and some days you won’t. So I think if we see it as an impulse, as a reaching towards a way that might be better and not like having to perfect it and be kind of like monk like, or, you know.
Jonathan Fields: [00:53:00] More like a practice than an action. It’s like. Yeah
Julia Baird: [00:53:03] I think it is that too.
Jonathan Fields: [00:53:04] Yeah.
Julia Baird: [00:53:04] I think we’ll put ourselves off if we think, oh, I could never be like that. I love holding my grudges. I love nursing them at night. Was it Fran Lebowitz talks about how she loves to sleep alone with her grudges at night.
Jonathan Fields: [00:53:16] I love her.
Julia Baird: [00:53:19] And she’s so good.
Jonathan Fields: [00:53:20] It’s like the former New Yorker in me is like, ah, feels like home.
Julia Baird: [00:53:24] I know when I was in New York, like earlier this year, I was like, wow, am I going to be like, like turning up like a vegan at a Texan barbecue talking about relinquishing grudges. And forgiveness here. And my friends were like, well, hold grudges for you. Yeah. But I don’t think, I mean, some dates, you’ll have bad days, you’ll have people that’ll really drive you crazy. But I think my overall point is, if we talk and think and reflect and meditate on other ways of being and ways in which we’ve seen, witnessed, experienced behavior that really moves us and really makes us kind of want to be better or, you know, just benefited from it ourselves. Someone who gave us the benefit of a doubt, someone who gave us a second chance when we’re a kid, when we’re in a school teacher or a cop or like whoever, if we kind of talk more about what that means, I think we’ll all be better off for it.
Jonathan Fields: [00:54:15] Yeah. So great. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So in this container of Good Life Project., if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?
Julia Baird: [00:54:24] Hunt or relish, wonder and open your heart to grace.
Jonathan Fields: [00:54:31] Mm. Thank you.
Julia Baird: [00:54:32] Thank you so much.
Jonathan Fields: [00:54:35] Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, safe bet, you’ll also love the conversation we had with Dacher Keltner about awe. You’ll find a link to Dacher’s episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help By Alejandro Ramirez. Kristoffer Carter crafted our theme music and special thanks to Shelley Adelle Bliss for her research on this episode. And of course, if you haven’t already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project. in your favorite listening app. And if you found this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable, and chances are you did. Since you’re still listening here. Would you do me a personal favor? A seven-second favor and share it? Maybe on social or by text or by email? Even just with one person? Just copy the link from the app you’re using and tell those you know, those you love, those you want to help navigate this thing called life a little better so we can all do it better together with more ease and more joy. Tell them to listen, then even invite them to talk about what you’ve both discovered. Because when podcasts become conversations and conversations become action, that’s how we all come alive together. Until next time, I’m Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.