Lord Michael Hastings’ Living with Purpose Ted X talk

CRAIG

Hello, and welcome to desperately seeking wisdom with me, Craig Oliver. This is a podcast for people who want to live a simpler, more fulfilled life, but aren't sure how to get there. A little while back, I hit the buffers. Outwardly, I had a successful life, but I wasn't happy. I couldn't see much point in anything. I rarely felt at peace and thought of life as a grind that I just had to get through. I realised I was far from alone, and wondered if there might be a different, better way.

So, for Desperately Seeking Wisdom, I've been talking to some wise people. People who've managed to change, or have had changed forced upon them. What was the wisdom that got them through it? What would they say that would help others who, like me, were struggling?

MICHAEL

You want to seek wisdom and what is our wisdom? If, if our society carries on in the ‘I’ll stand on one side, you stand on the other, and let's fire and see you hits first’.

CRAIG

My guest today is Lord Michael Hastings, an independent peer in the House of Lords. For decades, he has worked in the public, corporate and non-profit sectors, with one purpose in mind: helping the lives of the poor. He believes so many of our issues with life could be solved if we found ways to help others.

So look, in terms of doing the research about you, um, the thing that was very interesting was that you are of very mixed heritage. [LAUGHS] Do you want to tell us a bit about that?

MICHAEL

I'm a Afro Caribbean, Panamanian hybrid. So my father was born in Angola in Luanda. His parents were missionaries of Indian heritage. Er, he came to the UK, studied in Edinburgh, became a doctor then a dental surgeon, then moved to the Caribbean, to Jamaica where he met my mother in Savanna la Mar, er, while doing her teeth, and she was half Panamanian and her mother was of Ghanaian background.

CRAIG

And looking back, can you feel the different influences of those cultures coming together, or did it - was not really noticeable?

MICHAEL

It wasn't noticeable at all. My brother and I were both born in England, I was born in the northwest of England in a little place called Widnes, which is, as I often say, somewhere you drive very fast past when you see the sign on the motorway [LAUGHS] because, not a lot there, and there wasn't a lot there either. But my father was a dental surgeon and, um, that's where we grew up, and then before - we went from Widnes to Jamaica, 1966.

CRAIG

So how old were you when you left Widnes?

MICHAEL

Eight.

CRAIG

Eight, and why did you go to Jamaica? Why did the family leave?

MICHAEL

Well, so Jamaica became an independent country in 1962 and there was a call out to the British government for aid to support the development of medical practice, and so doctors, nurses. Jamaicans who had come on Windrush to the UK but were professionals were being invited to come back, and so my father took up the option, being a dental surgeon, to go back to Jamaica to practice, which is what he did.

So we went. We took a boat, which was very nice. Went from Southampton, I remember. We went to Kingston, which is the capital of Jamaica, then we were settled in Montego Bay and my father was a dental surgeon in the town.

CRAIG

Must have been quite a sh- culture shock, going from Widnes to Jamaica.

MICHAEL

No, not in the slightest.

CRAIG

Oh, come on!

MICHAEL

No, not in the slight- no, it really wasn't because [LAUGHTER] -

CRAIG

I mean, no, no, you’re going from a town in the north of England, [Yes], in the ‘60s, [Yes] which is wet and cold, [And it snows] and you're going - yes, and you're going to, er, the Caribbean culture. That is a big change of culture.

MICHAEL

Well, it is technically a big change of culture. Did I feel it as a big change of culture? No, I didn't because I've learnt all my life to adapt to where I am. Whatever circumstances I find myself, I just adapt to it. I adapt to the people I'm with, I adapt to environments I'm placed in and I don't feel discomfited.

And it never occurred to me - I mean, I saw my, my - this is my famous true story and it’s absolutely true. My dear mother was stopped in the street in Widnes, and I think I must have been probably five or six, and this lady stopped my mother and said to her, ‘Can I ask you, before you came here, did you really live in trees?’

And I remember my mother reaching out her hand like this, ah - and hold- touching the lady's arm. She always used to do this patting motion, and she said, ‘No, dear. We had houses just like you’ and we walked on. And I was actually talking to somebody about it yesterday, because the person I was discussing these issues of racial impact with yesterday, said to me, ‘I’ve allowed stuff from my childhood to continue to dominate my thinking and to make me aggressive and irritable, and’, and he said, ‘You just, you told that story, you just let it go’.

I said, ‘Well, there was nothing to hold on to. It was a dumb question. My mother gave a sweet answer. You move on’. I didn't, I took nothing from it, and when we went to Jamaica, my father was working in the town, my mother was making home. We went to school, life carried on.

CRAIG

It's interesting you say that, ‘cos on the one hand, I, I do get your point that it was borne out of ignorance, but you know, racism is racism and a lot of people had very dark and difficult experiences, being part [Yeah] of the Windrush generation. [Yeah] Is there a danger that you can sort of gloss over it a bit?

MICHAEL

No, I would never gloss over what is vivid historic or contemporary racism, but what I do think is so important is for each of us as individuals not to allow ourselves to become persecuted perpetually by other people's negativity, scepticism, ignorance, racism. If you take it all on and you take it in - remember, we're only responsible for our reaction to things, not other people's statement of them.

And people say strange things all the time, which could be challenging and if you let it pierce your soul and then you become aggressive, or permanently distorted or angry by it, that doesn't help you heal or move forward. I'd rather be in a place of perpetual forgiveness.

CRAIG

So it’s interesting, we've got we've got quite serious quite quickly, but if you spoke to younger people, and it’s - you can generalise about it, but younger, um, you know, Black or Asian people in this country, a lot of them would say that one of the reasons that we're in the predicament we're in at the moment is because people did just sort of ignore it and let it go. [Mm]

Actually, they feel that the r- what we need to do now is have zero tolerance, and just like, call it out, say it's not acceptable and be very, very clear on that, because in the past, we've allowed things to creep through or explained away things, but your approach is, is much more gentle than that.

MICHAEL

I spent nine years as a commissioner for the Commission for Racial Equality. I had the longest running tenureship on the legal body responsible for protecting and defending against racism and bringing clarity to racial issues of the UK. I don't take any of it lightly, but I don't, I don't believe in hanging myself on other people's folly.

Call it out, yes. Challenge somebody for their critique of ignorance, or their comment of ignorance, but if I can choose to help somebody walk a journey of becoming more understanding, more aware, I'd rather do that than attack back. I'm not an attacker, I use process and policy and procedure to challenge.

CRAIG

But what's interesting, what you're saying, it seems to me, is that you don't want it to define you, or ca- you to carry the burden of it. So you can [Yes] set it aside and let it go, and that that's a, a fi- you find a more healthy approach.

MICHAEL

I do. I do. I meet, I meet endlessly wound up people all the time, and they're so into their issue, and they're campaigning on it perpetually. Meanwhile, life is moving on at a pace with others, and they're stuck in the hole of great regrets, and huge, furious anger doesn't help. What we have to do, and I - this is something I, I hold dearest in all of the relationships in my life, is build bridges with people who are radically different to us, think differently to us, believe differently to us. Build the bridges, make relationships, build friendships, enjoy one another, learn about each other, learn about different cultures, and in the light of doing that, wake up.

CRAIG

I sort of don't wanna get bogged down in it, but I think what's interesting is that the challenge that people would say to you is, that particularly on the race issue, you know, for too long we've allowed things to slide, which results in a police officer leaning on George Ford's neck for 11 minutes, or however long it was, [Nine minutes, 42 seconds] and killing him. Right?

And they would say that, that going easy and saying, ‘Actually, they've got good hearts’ and all that kind of stuff has actually allowed this stuff to continue and to perpetuate, and that if you take your approach, [LAUGHS] you end up with stuff like that.

MICHAEL

No, that is absolute nonsense, and, you know, I spend a large amount of my time amongst people who've been bound up by the criminal justice system, incarcerated in Her Majesty's prisons, which I did yesterday, spending 10 hours in a high security prison, and I - therefore I come across people all the time who feel wounded by how systems have done them down.

And what I tried to do with them, and we've had great success at doing this, is help them to think about what they need in their own soul. What kind of clarity of purpose do they need? What forgiveness do they need of those who've wounded against them? You know, we've just seen the death of FW de Klerk, and the great rush of the media was say, ‘Well, this man was a defender of apartheid’.

He was until he released Nelson Mandela and they became chums and friends, and then he worked with Mandela to bring democracy to Blacks in South Africa, and then he became the vice president, serving the Black president so the system would work for everybody, and they got the Nobel Peace Prize together.

CRAIG

Yeah. And it's, it’s the -

MICHAEL

- that’s - but no, let - this is important, Craig. But rather than hang our hats on the sort of aggressive way of going at people, find the win-win for everyone. Find [So-] the middle place of peace for everyone.

CRAIG

Yeah. No, I'm very sympathetic to that view, but I think that a lot of people find it very, very challenging.

MICHAEL

They do! I know! [And] But you see, you want to seek wisdom and what is our wisdom? If, if our society carries on in the ‘I’ll stand on one side, you stand on the other, and let's fire and see you hits first’. [I want-] That's why we have red lines in the House of Commons so they didn't get their swords out and attack each other. They had to learn how to dialogue.

CRAIG

We're gonna dig into this a lot more later, but I want to get back to young Michael, [Yes] and I thought one story that is, is interesting is that your father would read Rudyard Kipling's poem ‘If’ [Yeah] to you every week, which is interesting, because actually, given what we've just been talking about, it has been a massive revision, this view of, um, of Kipling isn't there? And saying that, you know, basically he was a terrible colonial racist and that we shouldn't take him seriously. So, trying and tying all of that stuff together, [LAUGHS] what have you got to say?

MICHAEL

[LAUGHS] What I'm going to say is that my dear father, who sadly died in a car crash when, er, I was 16 years old, was insistent that every Sunday my brother and I would sit down and pay attention to Rudyard Kipling's ‘If’, and the purpose of the poem is to end up with, ‘This is what will make you a man, my son’.

Now, both my brother and I, but I think probably me more than my brother, found it incredibly irritating Sunday by Sunday by Sunday to have this thing read to us multiple times. Now, I treasure it. What, whatever side views Rudyard Kipling had, and maybe he did, but what he wrote was magnetic, and significant. And as far as my dear Black Caribbean, Indian, er, African father was concerned, this was wisdom, we needed to pay attention.

CRAIG

So give us a couple of examples of the bits of wisdom that you think are particularly pertinent from that poem.

MICHAEL

Well, one of the things he says so clearly is if you, ‘If you can take hold of triumph and disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same’. I love the way ‘imposters’. In other words, don't get consumed by triumph: ‘I’ve won it, I’ve won it, I’ve got it!’. Don't get consumed by disaster: ‘I've lost it, I’ve lost it, I’ve lost it’. Treat those two impostors just the same, because you've got a journey ahead of you, you've got to be ready to live with.

And, you know, he talks about if you can pick up after you've lost everything, pick up absolutely everything from the kind of ashes of what you lost, and rebuild again, and put all your nerve and sinew into recreating what you think you once lost, these are the characteristics of calibre. I like that.

CRAIG

I think it's interesting because I picked up, on the way into your office, something else which says, ‘I am smart, I am kind, I am beautiful. I'm important, I am brave, I am strong. I am amazing, I am confident, I am loved’, which actually is a lot of modern thinking about, how do you encourage somebody to feel confident and happy and balanced, and go out into the world? Kipling's poem doesn't say that, [It doesn’t] but yet, you obviously think that that is also incredibly important.

MICHAEL

I believe very firmly in self-affirmation. You know, that people need to be willing to look in the mirror and don't see what they look like, but see who they are, and begin each day content because you - if you begin each day disgruntled by what you see or who you think you are, you begin the day disgruntled, it's almost inevitable you'll pick on others.

CRAIG

And did you get that affirmation as a child? [Oh, constantly] You got the Rudyard Kipling side of things, [Yeah] but did you get the affirmations?

MICHAEL

Constantly, constantly. More from Mum than from Dad, but yeah, we absolutely did. And which is one of the reasons why I say, the transfer between you know, northwest, dry, dull, England. Wet, cold, snowy, grey - still is - to sparklingly bright, sunny, warm, nice breezes, Montego Bay, Jamaica was not a hard thing to do.

CRAIG

So when you were 16, you decided you were going to say what your mission and purpose was in life. [I did, mm, mm] What was that all about?

MICHAEL

Well, I was at this most wonderful school, Scarisbrick Hall in Lancashire, and my dear friend, er, also called Michael, er, I just remember the question. I'm seeing, I'm seeing where we were right now. I remember the question, ‘What do you want to do with the rest of your life?’ which is, for most 16-year-olds is not the question they're normally used to answering, you know, if they’re asked. And it just came out, ‘I want to speak for the poor and I want to bend the power of the prosperous to the potential of the poor’.

CRAIG

And do you feel that your 16-year-old self was right and wise?

MICHAEL

Well, my 16-year-old self was very aware, ‘cos I had seen the sharp toughness and discomfort of poverty in the Caribbean. I was very aware of it, and I was very aware that the reason why I was at boarding school in England was because the country was in meltdown, and my parents were back there and, and I was very aware that people were living on - threadbare lives.

And so poverty was in the forefront of my reality. I mean, I saw endless pictures. My father would show us old photographs of his father who was a medical missionary in Luanda, and there are all these people with terrible medical conditions and absence of any form of decency and, er, decent housing and sanitation, and all the rest of it.

And I remember looking at all those images as a young child and asking, ‘Why is it like that?’ So we were made aware of poverty, its extremes, its demands, its needs, its pain, and I wasn't just going to be sending sentimental about it, I wanted to be pragmatic about it. So that's why I added the phrase, you know, that I'd speak for the poor and bend the power of the prosperous to the potential of the poor.

CRAIG

And has that mission changed or altered in the -?

MICHAEL

Not one jot.

CRAIG

So a lot of people would, would also say that if you look back at your 16-year-old self, you know, saying, ‘Look, you know, you're naturally innocent, naïve. You got a lot to learn’, and that you reshape, but you're not - you're not saying that. You, basically at 16, you were absolutely clear, this is what I want to -

MICHAEL

Crystal clear. Crystal clear, because I had seen and experienced chaos in the streets. You know, if - here we are, sitting here having a conversation at the point at which people are on the border between Belarus and Poland, in freezing cold temperatures, without the affirmation of life and uncertain as to whether they turn back, or just throw themselves forward at the barbed wire.

I mean, real people in desperate circumstances, not knowing where they’re gonna lie down in warmth, or even eat. Those are r- if you see those realities, I saw realities of violence and vengeance. I saw, I saw shops empty out completely. I saw people begging for food. I saw it with my own eyes as a little child, and I was therefore, I could not turn and - I had to take it on. You - where you can, you know, some people say, ‘Oh’ -

CRAIG

That's, that's, that’s an interesting point isn't it? ‘Where you can’, because like, you're bringing in, you know, some stuff that's happening globally at the moment and [Yes] there’s some big things, and I agree, it's a tragedy what's happening in that part of the world, but I’m not really sure I can do anything about it, and I can spend all my time focused on it and thinking, you know, about it, but actually, in reality, it's probably gonna make me miserable and they’re - actually I'm not gonna necessarily be able to focus on other things that are perhaps important because I'm focusing on that. Does that make sense?

MICHAEL

Yes, it does, but I can do something about poverty, you know, which is why I am Vice President of UNICEF and an ambassador for Tear Fund and Chairman of the Board of the Zimbabwe Aid Agency, and, you know, I can do endless things through foundations and charities. I can also give substantially, which is what I really solidly believe in.

And, you know, in my time, my 13 wonderful years at KPMG, I had the joy of challenging the board of a commercial consulting business to commit $3 million to a tiny African village on a little island off the edge of Tanzania, north of Zanzibar, Micheweni village on Pemba Island, and when Professor Jeffrey Sachs approached me in 2009, Professor Sachs being the Professor of Economics at Columbia University in New York and the architect of the Millennium Development Goals and the Sustainable Development Goals.

When he approached me and he said, ‘Michael, nobody, no business, no government, the Tanzanian government, no intern- is prepared to look at this community of utterly left behind individuals’. I've - he said to me, ‘I've never seen such extreme destitution’. in everywhere he's visited all over the continent of Africa, all over Asia, he said, ‘I've never seen destitution like this’.

And w- ‘Do you think you could get KPMG to just take a look?’ And I went to see, and when I went to see for myself, and I smelt the stench of 10,000 people's non sanitation. Literally, no toilets. So the worms, the dirt, the infestation, the disease, the stench was overwhelming.

And I took it back to the company and I said to the, er, well, to the business, the partnership. I showed them pictures and I said to them, ‘I'm gonna need a couple of million dollars. I want to do this. I think we should do this’. ‘Is there a business interest for KPMG?’ ‘No, not at all’. ‘Is there any business to be gained?’ ‘No.’ ‘Is there any market advantage?’ ‘No.’

And so one of the members of the board said to me, ‘So why should we do it?’ And I said, ‘Because we can’.

CRAIG

That's great. I'm totally supportive of that. It's amazing that happened and it's a wonderful thing. I’m - and I'm gonna put - again, put a point of view that's not necessarily mine, but a lot of people would say, which is, there is a reason why KPMG does that. KPMG gets itself into all sorts of trouble all around the world and needs to be able to have a shield in order to protect itself. And $3 million for KPMG is a rounding error, and actually, bearing in mind your whole philosophy that you should tackle poverty wherever you could, frankly, they could be doing a hell of a lot more.

MICHAEL

Well, everybody could be doing a hell of a lot more. We can, we can all be doing a hell of a lot more and we sh- all should, but you see, I'm not prepared to give credence to the sneering view that companies endlessly only do what is kind to communities at home and abroad because they want to cover up for their misdeeds. I don't accept that.

I've been around too many companies to meet wonderful people whose hearts are bursting with positivity, and realising that what they're trying to do is move sometimes incalcitrant people in the middle of companies who only see one outcome, which is profit, and to help them move towards purpose.

And now, thank goodness, we have companies all over the world, particularly in the West, who love purpose, not just purpose statements, but purpose, delivery purpose activity, are genuinely, seriously committed to this stuff. So no, no room for cynicism. I'm sorry, I will not play that game.

CRAIG

So I want to understand a bit more about your Christianity and where that's come from, and how that informs how you go about things. Do you wanna just talk a bit about that? Why you're a Christian and, and how it informs your everyday life?

MICHAEL

Well, I'm not a Christian.

CRAIG

You’re not?

MICHAEL

No, I’m a follower of Jesus.

CRAIG

What's the difference?

MICHAEL

A huge difference, because Jesus never asked us to become Christians. He went around saying to people, ‘Come follow me’ and that's what I prefer to say. So, I know it's like a slip of the tongue, isn't it, that people like the phraseology of Christianity, or are you a Christian? No, I, I am a follower of Jesus, I want to pay attention to the person of Jesus as he was, and as I say, as he is.

I want to pay attention to his words and his thoughts. I want to pay attention to those he paid attention to, as in his focus, so clearly on the poor, the homeless, the destitute, the prostitutes, the marginalised, and for me, the big one on prisoners.

I pay attention to the priorities that Jesus had, and I want to follow and imbue those priorities for me. And it's faith, it's living faith. You know, I, I made a choice at 14 years of age to, er, when I made a commitment to follow Jesus, and I made a choice to choose to read the Bible every single day, and I think I can fairly say I've done that.

CRAIG

Do you look at other religions and think that actually, there's an awful lot to teach us and learn from that as well?

MICHAEL

Everyone. Abs- and that's one of the reasons I say, ‘Follow Jesus’, because many of my dear Muslim friends, they will also say, ‘Well, we'll follow Jesus too’, because they do believe in Jesus, the virtue of Jesus as the Prophet, in the same way that many Jewish friends will also say, ‘I’m, I, I, too can understand that Jesus was part of us’, which he was. And so following Jesus doesn't divide people, actually unites people.

CRAIG

It's interesting, isn't it, because I think a lot of people feel that a lot of the religions, and I use that word the religion, not necessarily the God side or the spiritual side, but the religions are basically pretty exclusive, aren't they? [Yes] They’re like, follow - follow this or, [Or out] or you’re out. [LAUGHTER] And, um, so people, people - and people struggle with that [Yeah, yeah] side of it, don’t they? But you, you don't believe that, or feel that?

MICHAEL

Well, Jesus was not - he - he was not - you know, wh- wh- they asked, ‘Where can we find Jesus?’ And his followers said, ‘You'll find him with the drunkards and the prostitutes. That's where you'll find him’. And so that isn't an exclusive place. That is a place that's kind of, you know, some people might say, ‘Well, you know, it's pretty unattractive’. It's reality life.

And so Jesus was keen on providing solutions. Well, he challenged us to provide solutions. I mean, you know, he tells a wonderful story about what we've always called The Good Samaritan. You know, there is a man, a Jewish man, beaten up on the road and abandoned to the side, in a ditch. Margaret Thatcher used to use this story all the time in relationship to Conservative policy.

And along comes a priest who thinks that ‘I'm too busy being a priest’, who walks by, and along comes a religious zealot who also thinks he’s too important and walks by, and then along comes a Samaritan, who essentially was a half Arab, and he picks up the broken man, puts him on his donkey and takes him to a nearby town, and provides for him, pays for him to stay in a hotel and receive medical help.

And Margaret Thatcher's point, she loved to say this all the time, was, ‘You see, he had to have been a capitalist, because he paid in advance for the man to stay in an inn’. Now, [LAUGHS] whichever way you look at that, um, there is - there is a story of great importance.

CRAIG

I agree, but I think what's interesting about what you're saying is that also by adding the Margaret Thatcher element, you're also coming to a point of well, people pick and choose. They look at it and go, ‘Well, I emphasise that bit and discount that bit’.

What I’m tr- I suppose what I'm trying to get to is that you seem to me to be somebody who wants to live it and follow it, without necessarily getting hung up on all the political aspects of it, for want of a better word.

MICHAEL

Well, I'd love to know which political aspects you think there are.

CRAIG

There's a huge amount of politics to religion. If you're a Baptist, you're very anti, very..

MICHAEL

Oh, you’re talking about denominational religion.

CRAIG

There's a lot of that kind of thing, [Yeah] but there's also, I think, a lot of politics in terms of what you choose to focus on, [Oh, absolutely] you know, I think that the reality is that you talk a lot about poverty, [Mm] and when you read the New Testament, I mean, it is utterly explicit. You know, ‘I say unto you, sell all you have and give to the poor. [Mm, mm] Have one shirt. It's harder than, for a man to go - camel to go through the eye of a needle’, [Yeah] all that kind of stuff.

And yet when you meet many modern-day Christians, you know, they're nowhere near that. And that's not to be critical, it's just that there is a lot of picking and choosing [There is] and, and putting things to one side, [There is] but you seem to be saying that the poverty aspect of it is, he's utterly explicit on that, so you've got to follow that.

MICHAEL

Well, my - the totem pole of truth on this one is the book of Matthew, in the Gospels, chapter 25, which is towards the end of the book, and, er, Jesus says that, ‘When the Son of Man comes in all his glory, He will put the sheep to one side and the goats to the other’.

‘Cos he says, ‘When I was hungry and thirsty, you brought me food, and you gave me drink. When I was homeless, you found me somewhere to live. When I was in prison, you came to visit me’, and people are saying, ‘When did we do that?’ And Jesus says to them, ‘When you did this to the least of these, my own dear children’, in other words, whoever they are, ‘When, when you did this to the least of these, you did this to me’. And he calls the, the, the sheep who have been willing to do for the least to come in, and let's not discuss where the goats go. Good curry.

CRAIG

Good curry. And then tell me about how it’s manifested in your life. Have there been moments where, that must have convinced you? Can you talk a little bit about that?

MICHAEL

If you really, genuinely believe deeply, as I do, that Jesus lives, that he rose from the dead, that he lives, and that he can live in us. If you really believe that, you've got to believe that what is central to the Bible's truth will be as central today as it was then.

And, you know, you ask anybody who loves Christmas, ‘What is probably one of the most beautiful aspects of all you can ever think about around Christmas?’ They'll say, ‘The angels, the angels’. You have all these little school plays and there’s angels everywhere and - now, take all the angels out of Christmas, what are you left with?

Well, okay, a mum and a dad and a grotty place to which to have a child, but angels are really important. The Bible’s very clear that God comes to us in angelic form, sometimes without us noticing, and I think that's really important. I mean, I've had experiences of helping people, and I don't know whether they were sent by God, but I know that I had to help them.

The one I, I remember the most vivid was a man in a wheelchair on the Euston road, in the middle lane of three lanes of traffic, and I could see that he had no legs, but there he was in a wheelchair, and he's moving his wheelchair through, and so I bumped my car up on the side, and I went into the middle of the traffic.

Said to him, ‘Were you trying to go?’ and he said, ‘I want to go to Euston station’. I said, ‘Well, you can't do it going in the middle of the road because you'll get killed’ and all these cars are going by and blowing their horns, and trucks and vans and everything else.

And so I said, ‘I'm gonna pull you over to the pavement’. So I pulled him through the traffic carefully, got him to the pavement, and then pushed him all the way from the underpass bit down to Euston station, and then took him into Euston station, and I mean, he was what many would call a vagabond. He was, er, dirty and, yeah, smelly, and messy and old, and unshaven, and all of those things.

And, um, and I took him there and I said, ‘Well, can I, can I leave you here now?’ He said, ‘No, you need to, you need to take me to the toilet’. So I took him to the toilets and, and I said, ‘What do you want me to do?’ He said, ‘Can you put me on the-‘

He had no legs, so I had to do it. You - put him on the toilet and then, er, and then I said, ‘Can I’, he said, ‘No, you need to sort me out’. So I had to sort him out. And in those days, there were shavers in the sta- train station, ‘cos this was like pre-AIDS and you could put 50p into the, into the slot and out would come a shaver, and he asked me to shave him.

And, and I remember tidying him up and shaving him, and then he finally said, ‘Now you can go’. And I had been reading in the Book of Hebrews that God sends us angels unawares, and we need to treat them as friends. People who are complex and uncomfortable and different, treat them as friends. And that, that is a driver for me too, for a lot of the work that I do with offenders and ex-offenders, is to see them as friends, to choose to see them as friends, because some of them may be angels.

CRAIG

So let's talk a little bit about how you're trying to do that very practically at the moment, in terms of your dealings with the criminal justice system. [Mm] Tell us a bit about that and why you are so attracted to that.

MICHAEL

I learnt about a year and a half ago, that, er, this is an official Ministry of Justice figure, that less than nine percent of, I mean, the majority of people in prison are man. Er, out of 88,000 people in prison 4,000 are women, 84,000 are men. Um, that's a pretty bad commentary on men, but there we go. Um, but I learnt that less than nine percent of people in prison ever receive a visit, especially if they're doing sentences longer than four years, and -

CRAIG

So one of the people that we've been interviewing for this podcast is a, er, a psychiatrist called, um, Dr Bruce Perry, who has worked with Oprah Winfrey a lot and he's written a book which is called, ‘What Happed to You’, and he says that the biggest issue is that we spend all our time looking at somebody and saying, ‘What's wrong with you?’ when actually, if we asked the other question, ‘What happened to you?’ we'd have a proper understanding, [Yes] and a better understanding, and we might have a chance, say in the cr-criminal justice system of actually helping people rehabilitate, or better than we currently do. Is that something you'd agree with?

MICHAEL

Oh, I do agree that with that, absolutely. It’s discovering that these are people just like us. You know, one of the things that we have been doing recently is a reverse mentoring programme in one of the high-risk prisons that we're working in, and when I say working in, we don't get paid, it is one thousand percent voluntary.

Not even expenses, not even the petrol to go there, but we do it, we've been doing it for six years, we've done over 48 sessions now, and the reverse mentoring programme where we've had Black residents - some people call them prisoners, I say residents, ‘cos they are resident.

So, Black residents are mentoring white officers, and it means that the officer no longer has the power over the person. I mean, technically they do, but for that two to three hour period, the conversation is being led by the resident, the prisoner. It's about their life, their story, their challenges, their background, and the officer is discovering that this person they've ordered around for years, is a human being who lived on the same estate as them, who had the same complexities of parental distress as they did, who had the possibility, they both had the possibility of going left or right and this one guy went left and the other guy went right, and they discover humanity

CRAIG

I, I am deeply sympathetic to that, and I do think that if you want to get to a situation where you're actually gonna understand and rehabilitate people, then you need to start doing some of the techniques that you're doing, but I think that this is a pretty minority view.

Most people if you spoke to would say, ‘Hang on a minute, you just said they’re people just like us’. And then they would say, ‘That's not true’. They would immediately go to the hard cases, they would go to the paedophiles and the rapists and the murderers, and they would say that they have caused real and lasting damage, and actually, the job of the criminal justice system is to make sure that they understand that they have done that, and that they never do that again, and that there is a consequence to the damage they've caused. And so they would say, listen to somebody like you going, ‘Oh, it's you, know, they’re people just like us, and we should all be nice to each other’ and like, you know s-

MICHAEL

No, you're being cynical again.

CRAIG

No, I am deliberately, [Mm] just because I want to provoke you to give me the answer. [LAUGHTER]

MICHAEL

I knew you were trying to provoke me. [LAUGHS] You see, the hard cases are tragic and evil, and there is no running away from the necessity for severe punishment, incarceration, and for justice to be done. I, you know, I, I have been involved in the criminal justice system for nearly 40 years and you - there's no rushing away from the need for the courts, and the system and the prisons to do what they need to do to give people the opportunity of recalibrating their lives and becoming responsible citizens.

I mean, we don't have the death penalty, and they - most of them will come out at some point. So what kind of people will they be when they come out? Where will they live and who will they live near and with? And we run the risk if we just tar every one of them with the, hm, the vindictive brush of their vileness, that they'll be next to us on the bus, or with us on the underground.

Or we can actually believe that the worst of people, with some exceptions, you know, the persistent person whose only purpose in crime or terrorism, or evil or abuse, is to take everything from someone else, no matter how much it leaves them bedraggled, destroyed, killed, finished. I think I can fairly say that is a small minority.

CRAIG

This is a podcast that was borne out of the idea that a lot of people want to change the way they live their lives. They feel that maybe the way in which they've been going about things isn't quite working. And I watched your TEDx talk, which I think anybody who's listening to this should also go and watch, and there's a bit at the end where you basically go through all the sort of leading indicators of how we live our life in society.

And you’re basically, your point is, they're all going in the wrong direction. Basically, you're saying we've got it badly wrong. So with that in mind, if people are feeling discomfort about how they're living their lives and going about it, what would you say that they should start to do, if they want to make changes and feel better?

MICHAEL

Let me quote Winston Churchill, who, irrespective of whatever people may think of some of his perspectives, was a heroic figure, and this is one of the totemically significant things he said; that we make a living from what we get, but we get a life and what we give. And everybody has the choice then to do their work, and then to give time.

And hats off a billion percent to every, every food bank operator, and I know so many of them. People of every type, who have put - not just put food aside for others, but organise the food in meaningful ways that it blesses tens of thousands of families. Hats off for those who, during the pandemic, carried meals around to children who couldn't afford otherwise to get lunches, took the meals around to support them, made by amazing restaurants who gave food away.

Hats off to people who have decided that they're going to foster and support children who don't have anywhere else to turn. To those who are willing to take in refugees. For those who are prepared to go running around a park for hours and hours and hours, to raise that corner of money that supports further research and whatever the disease or disorder happens to be, that sends money to get behind those who are boat people turning up with nothing.

CRAIG

What I'm trying to understand here is, are you saying that that is something that you have a duty to do? Or you, are you saying that actually, when you do that kind of thing, you feel more balanced and centred and better as a human?

MICHAEL

Tot- you got it, Craig, you got it. When people make the choice to reach beyond, to reach out, to, to stretch towards, to go towards, to give towards, to spend time with. When we make that choice, instead of just trudging to work or trudging away from it, or doing a thing functionally, we can then have life because we're giving life.

And, and what's important, Craig, to say, is for any of us who find ourselves with more resources than we need to live every day, we can be so grateful that our - there's water in our taps and there's electricity when you flip the switch, and there's heating in our homes, and there's food in the supermarkets and, and we're well and we're alive. We got vaccines, and tomorrow is coming and we're so grateful.

So I - my wisdom to anybody is, be grateful. Be grateful, but as you are grateful, look around with wide eyes, and don't walk by.

CRAIG

Because you will get something else of being engaged?

MICHAEL

Well, you know, I, I, I’m gonna quote a dear friend who - Paul Polman, the former Chief Executive of Unilever, and I heard him say that he'd understood that giving was one of the most selfish things you can ever do, because you are more blessed than the receiver is. In what you give, you are more enriched. You hand over that thing, or that money, or that experience, or that answer, and just the lift in your spirit is huge. And for the other person, it's wow! But you come away from it so much better than if they gave it to you. I love that. Let's all be selfish by giving.

CRAIG

Thanks so much to Lord Michael Hastings. Please like and subscribe to this podcast, and tell a friend who you think might like it. You can also visit our website: desperatelyseekingwisdom.com.

Our next guest is Sian Williams. As one of television’s best known news presenters, Sian witnessed some horrific events. This prompted her to re-train as a psychologist - so she could help people emerge from their worst moments, to grow in wisdom and happiness. I hope you can join us for that conversation. I’m Craig Oliver and this is a Creators Inc Production.