Translator: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Cristina Bufi-Pöcksteiner
From the moment she walked in the door, I knew something was wrong.
My youngest daughter, my baby, my redhead, Libby,
she had her head down and her shoulders slumped,
and a little teary-eyed.
She talked about how her day at school had been,
how a couple of the girls in her class had invented a game
called "Libby Touch."
They decided that she had a disease
and that if they came in contact with her, they would be infected with her disease.
And soon, that group of girls, through social pressure,
had it spread to the whole entire class
and Libby had to play recess by herself.
You can imagine how I responded as a dad.
I did what any good dad would do:
I put on my steel-toe boots, my leather vest -
(Laughter)
and my do-rag,
and I hopped right into my Subaru Forester station wagon -
(Laughter)
because I was going to beat every one of those kids.
And that's not what I did, but -
I wanted to.
I was frustrated.
I was the one that had taught Libby how to be original,
how to march to her own beat and do her own thing,
and now she was being tortured at school for it.
What would you do?
You send your kids to school,
expect them to be in a safe learning environment
so they can grow to be productive members of society,
and then they get bullied to the point of tears.
What would you do?
Would you switch schools?
Would you teach them the old one-two
so they can punch the other kid in the nose and defend up for themselves?
Would you tell the administration that it's their fault,
that they need to take control of the classroom?
Or would you do nothing
and let all those years of anger and frustration and bitterness build
until one day they get a gun and walk into a school or a church,
or maybe suicide becomes the only option?
My quest,
my journey:
I had to find an answer for Libby.
I found an answer.
In fact, I found the answer,
the answer that's as old as wisdom itself,
the answer that's found in the ancient texts
of 21 of the world's major religions.
That answer is known as the "ethic of reciprocity,"
but we know it in our culture as the "golden rule."
Now, I knew the golden rule.
My dad taught it to me:
the man with the gold makes the rules!
That's right!
(Laughter)
But the golden rules says,
"Treat other people like you would want to be treated."
The problem is that Libby didn't know the golden rule
because like many kids in schools today, she hadn't been taught it,
and the reason why she hadn't been taught it
is because I couldn't teach it, because I wasn't living it myself.
Oh, sure, I learned a portion of the golden rule.
I call it the brass idea.
You know, the brass idea:
"You be good to me and I'll be good to you.
You be mean to me -
forget about it!"
And up until this point,
that's the example that my kids had to interact with each other.
I was taught how to judge people as bad.
"Bad guy, you cut me off in traffic."
"Bad guy, you cheated me at the store."
"Bad guy, you bullied my kid and made her cry."
And I knew how to treat bad guys.
I'd been taught by all my childhood heroes:
Hulk Hogan, the A-Team -
Remember Mr. T? "I Pity the Fool"!
(Laughter)
You've got the Justice League, with Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.
They taught me things like, "Give them the taste of their own medicine,"
or, "Fight fire with -
(Audience) Fire.
Yeah, you guys watched those same programs I did.
And although that makes for a great story on television,
in real life, can you imagine your house being engulfed with flames
and the fire trucks pulling in
and the firefighters jumping out with flame throwers
to extinguish the fire?
It reminds me of what Gandhi said,
"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
So I needed to come up with a system,
something that was simple and duplicatable,
that I could live and then give to my three kids.
So, I came up with three simple steps of how to enact the golden rule.
And the first step is: respond with kindness.
There's an old proverb that says, "A kind answer will turn away wrath."
I picked kindness first for two reasons.
One, we've been programmed to treat other people the way [they're] treating us.
So in other words, you treat me bad, I treat you bad, you treat me bad,
and we create this cycle.
But when I choose to respond -
See,
you've also been programmed to respond to me the way I treat you.
So it'll work like this:
you treat me poorly,
and instead of reacting, I choose to respond with kindness.
Well, then it becomes really difficult for you to respond poorly to me.
You respond nice to me, and then I respond with kindness to you,
then you respond nice to me.
Now, you've got to be careful
because this could potentially make you a lot of friends.
(Laughter)
The second reason why I chose kindness first
is because you need to understand what bullies want.
Bullies need that reaction.
Bullies want that anger, or that frustration, or that hurt back.
And when you choose to respond with kindness,
you stop giving them what they want,
and usually, a bully will pick an easier target.
The second idea is forgiving.
And I've got to tell you:
this idea was really, really difficult for me.
See, I had held in bitterness and anger and resentment,
I had a fantastic memory
and I had a list of wrongs a mile long
of things people had done to me in the past.
And when I learned to get present
and I realized all that hurt and all that anger were causing pain inside -
It's attributed to Buddha
of saying that unforgivingness is like drinking poison
and expecting your enemy to die.
The problem is that not only had I been drinking the poison,
but the poison was starting to seep out as I was leaving that example to my kids.
And once I got present with that feeling and that hurt and that anger
and I released it,
there was a certain peace.
I would call it the peace that passes understanding.
And when I was able to have that peace,
it's amazing how easy it was to teach that to my kids.
The third idea is blessing,
and blessing and forgiveness really go hand in hand.
And it's not "blessing" in a religious sense.
This is "blessing" in a humanitarian sense.
Desmond Tutu said that we're all hurting and broken inside
and it's out of that brokenness that we have that we hurt others.
It was when we started to realize
that the reason why the kids were treating her mean
is because they were broken,
and when we started to connect to that humanity, that they're broken,
we were able to have compassion
and bless them or pray for them, if you will,
that their brokenness be whole and made complete
so they would stop having the need to hurt other people.
So, it looks like this:
Libby will come home from school
and you can pretty much tell from her face that she's had a bad day.
And I'll get down with her and I'll put my arm around her shoulder
and I'll say, "Hey Libby, tell me about it."
And she'll tell me about what the kids did to her at school that day
and how it really made her upset,
and I'll say, "You know what, Libby?
That was wrong.
That makes me angry they did that to you.
But you know what? I'll forgive that kid. Will you forgive them with me?"
And we go through forgiveness together,
and after that, we connect to their humanity and we have compassion.
Sometimes we even play the pain game,
where we think about pains that that child might be having at home
or with their brothers and sisters
that might be causing that pain in their life that's causing them to hurt.
I'll be perfectly honest with you:
there are some times that Libby has what we call the a Dixie Chicks moment.
(Laughter)
She just "ain't ready to make nice."
(Laughter)
The other day,
with her sister Emma, they were fighting,
and I pulled Libby aside and said,
"Libby, I saw what Emma did and that was wrong. Let's forgive her."
And she said, "No, Dad! I'm mad and I want to be angry!"
And you know what?
That's okay,
because sometimes we need to have that anger,
we need to get present with it,
in order to be able to release it.
So I teach this to my kids.
Oh God, there's some times when this has been really difficult
and really frustrating,
and sometimes it feels like it's not working.
But then, then you get those times
when you're listening to your son on the telephone
and he's 15 and he's talking to one of his friends at school who's getting bullied,
and he is walking them through forgiveness.
Or you get that time
when you get that call from the teacher in the middle of the day
and she says, "Mr. Daniel,
I just wanted to let you know that we had an incident at school
and Libby got bullied.
And we've taken care of it,
but we just want to let you know so you can handle things when you get home."
And I get home and I say, "Okay, Libby. What happened?"
And she says,
"Well, a kid at school bullied me today.
But it's okay, I forgive them,"
and then she hops off.
That's when I know that this is really working.
Again, I reiterate:
just living the golden rule with my kids,
it has been a funky journey for me.
There's been times when it's been difficult
and there's been times when I didn't want to do it.
And that's okay, I readjusted,
I got present with myself
and I continued on,
because this is my journey,
this is what I'm doing to raise the next generation.
And now that we've been together for the last few minutes,
this is your journey.
So it comes to this:
the next time somebody cuts you off in line,
the next time they shortchange you,
the next time they make your kid cry in school,
what are going to do about it?
Are you going to put on your steel-toe boots and your leather vest
and your do-rag?
Or are going to respond with kindness,
forgiveness and blessing?
That is my idea worth spreading.
Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheers)