The Art of Manliness - #144： Living the Braveheart Life With Randall Wallace

00:00:00.000 we're at mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well

00:00:18.580 believe it or not we're coming up on the 20th anniversary of the release of the movie brave

00:00:22.820 heart now if you're like a lot of men who grew up in the 90s this movie might have been a touchstone

00:00:27.520 for you at least it was for me i remember when i played football on game days my buddies and i

00:00:31.860 would get together to watch this movie to get pumped up watching william wallace rouse his troops the

00:00:37.000 battle scenes watching the final scene where he yells out freedom before he gets executed it's

00:00:41.920 just a movie that fills you with thumos and inspires you well today on the podcast i have the man who

00:00:47.840 created the william wallace that we know because of braveheart his name is randall wallace he's a

00:00:53.160 screenwriter director producer also a songwriter and he recently published a book called living

00:00:58.700 the braveheart life finding the courage to follow your heart and it's the story of how his life led

00:01:04.180 up to the creation of braveheart really powerful book it's a story of courage of passion of love

00:01:12.380 of family of setbacks of faith and today on the podcast we discuss all these topics and the lessons

00:01:18.580 we can learn from the film braveheart really powerful discussion one of my favorites i've had

00:01:24.360 in a long time on the podcast so you think you're really gonna get a lot out of this so without further

00:01:28.740 ado randall wallace living the braveheart life randall wallace welcome to the show great to be with you

00:01:43.680 brad so you are a screenwriter producer director songwriter who's worked on a lot of touchstone

00:01:50.820 films in american cinema and the one i think a lot of men particularly uh know you about and was sort

00:01:55.880 of your breakthrough was braveheart and we're coming up on the 20th anniversary of it i guess it is the

00:02:01.220 20th anniversary which is crazy it makes me feel kind of old um because i remember when it came out

00:02:07.580 um and you gotta think it makes me feel i can't believe it's 20 years either yeah it's nuts um but

00:02:16.940 along with this you come out with a book called living the braveheart life which is a really great

00:02:22.300 book it's part memoir part uh you know insights on being an artist part insights into life and what i

00:02:29.520 loved about it it seemed like the book living the braveheart life was really the story of how writing

00:02:35.820 braveheart braveheart helped you write the story of your own life exactly um so i'm curious let's

00:02:43.800 talk about that i mean what was your life like before braveheart and where did the inspiration come

00:02:49.280 to write braveheart because what i understand that the story of william wallace there really isn't that

00:02:52.800 much historic history about him we know little like fragments about him but you're able to develop

00:02:57.880 this really enriching story about him and robert the bruce the the literal history of william

00:03:05.500 wallace is uh known almost not at all um winston churchill in his series of books called a history

00:03:14.400 of the english-speaking peoples mentions william wallace and says that almost nothing is known about him

00:03:23.000 in terms of literal historical fact but his legends have inspired the scottish people for centuries

00:03:30.760 um that's the way i came across the story i was looking for my own family heritage um my wife was

00:03:40.300 pregnant with our first son and she knew her her lineage uh back on all sides to many generations because

00:03:49.720 she has mormon ancestors and um so because she knew hers i wanted to have some balance and know mine and

00:03:59.240 uh was looking for my roots in uh scotland and came across the statue of william wallace and

00:04:06.800 and the fact that very little was known about him um but on a deeper level uh to go back to your

00:04:14.620 question my life before braveheart um was in my view really rich um i grew up in the south i grew up in a

00:04:26.560 really um staunch protestant family tent revivals um church all the time and in some ways that uh sounds

00:04:38.100 like torture to people in some ways it was but i was exposed to the greatest literature uh the most

00:04:46.260 magnificent music orators who could hold an audience for hours on end and um and you know of course far

00:04:56.720 more important than that i was exposed to to christianity and and the the story of jesus of nazareth

00:05:03.760 and that was always important to me um i i wanted to live my life for some purpose greater than my own

00:05:15.180 appetites and um and i was inspired by by the story of jesus more than any other um but i was talking

00:05:24.540 with my family pastor who asked me if i felt the call to be a minister and i said i don't though i know

00:05:33.840 it's the greatest calling anyone could have and he said you're wrong the greatest calling you could

00:05:39.920 have is the one god has for you and um that was as if i had been knighted brett it was um feeling that

00:05:49.640 someone had released me to do everything i wanted to do in life or to try whatever i wanted to try

00:05:57.080 and i um i was really successful at school i went to duke university i majored in religion and had minor

00:06:05.780 studies in russian and creative writing i i had a time when i wanted to join the marine corps and their

00:06:13.020 platoon leader corps and then the malai massacre happened and um i i i saw that war as being in a stage

00:06:23.480 that was not something i wanted to go be a part of um but i really admired the people who had

00:06:29.860 put their lives on the line for their country i struggled with being a songwriter um came to

00:06:36.960 los angeles um i got into television writing and had a lot of success there uh then had some dark

00:06:44.400 moments and it was in those dark moments that i came to write braveheart the the answer to why

00:06:52.620 i i feel that this that writing braveheart was in some ways writing my own life is that the whole

00:07:02.620 situation of my life boiled up into the story of braveheart um a man who has to stand on a battlefield

00:07:12.600 and say i will live or die right here and living doesn't necessarily mean that my body survives

00:07:22.420 this battle but i will really live and that's where every man dies not every man really lives came

00:07:30.200 from and it's where the the whole trajectory of my life i believe was set in that decision to write

00:07:38.740 what i wanted to see and stories that i wanted to hear myself and this kind of stories i wanted to tell

00:07:46.760 my own sons and not what i thought hollywood wanted me to be or hollywood wanted to buy

00:07:52.660 it's amazing um so i mean when you were saying that that line you know every man dies and not

00:07:59.360 every man lives i mean i get chills you know every time i hear it um it's just so evocative and what i

00:08:05.220 love about braveheart and i think why it resonates with so many people and particularly men um is because

00:08:10.360 it hits on there's gore there's battles there's violence there's that but it hits on these really

00:08:16.300 these deep visceral ideas that just get you to the bone um and you talk about this in the braveheart

00:08:23.800 life and so for example you talk about how both braveheart and living a braveheart life

00:08:29.760 is is a story or it's about fathers and sons and the relationship and in your book you talk about

00:08:38.440 how your own father and his role in shaping you as a man can you tell us a bit about your dad and how

00:08:44.760 he helped you become the man you are today yeah that's uh that's in some ways the richest question

00:08:52.940 in life and red i love that you use the word visible um we we somehow want to make a separation

00:09:02.540 between our minds and our bodies and our spirits um the word soul to some people means soul like soul

00:09:11.220 music is is powerful and down to our core but other people use it as if there's some disembodied

00:09:19.180 um thing this this ghosty mist that's somehow our being my father connected me to life and um

00:09:31.740 um and the way we relate to our fathers i think is the as profound a relationship as we ever have

00:09:40.980 it's a part of the way we relate to our sons the way we relate to our wives or daughters our friends

00:09:51.340 um and the way we relate to ourselves our our dads give us um our first taste of our own identity

00:10:02.440 especially as men what does it mean to be a man we look to our fathers my father was really different

00:10:11.040 from me um on paper and if you you looked at us we seemed so different my father uh was

00:10:21.320 a much more compact man than i am um i'm sort of long and slender and my father was was much shorter

00:10:31.840 he was i i loved every sport there was if it was a ball or a bat or involved running into each other

00:10:40.520 or punching something i wanted to do it my father saw absolutely no use in running up and down a field

00:10:49.880 he couldn't see how that made money and my dad's whole life was about um how to survive because

00:10:56.920 he was a child of the depression and of world war ii uh in my my parents generation the worst sins

00:11:06.380 a person could commit were laziness and cowardice and that was understandable since the

00:11:14.440 economic survival was so vital to them being children of the depression um and and my father

00:11:25.020 at 14 years old went to work full time i was very smart but he had no one to encourage him to go to

00:11:34.860 college and um his own father had died before he was born so my father would would take my sister and

00:11:44.280 me when we were very young to a graveyard and we would stare at a um a monument uh a granite monument

00:11:53.240 that said wallace on it and my father would say this is my father um and we we never met him we

00:12:01.980 had not really even seen pictures of him so um it was in some ways mysterious to us why our father would

00:12:11.660 want us to look at that that stone in some ways i think it's because he he was trying to to wrap his

00:12:19.240 own mind around who his father was and the idea that this man who didn't have a father of his own not

00:12:28.740 a father who was breathing when he took his first breath should become the greatest of fathers uh a

00:12:35.920 caring i once said to somebody um my father may not have been a perfect man but you couldn't prove

00:12:44.580 that by me in my mind he was because he never raised his voice to us he never raised his voice to my

00:12:53.080 mother he never struck her he never drank he never embarrassed us we're always proud of our father

00:13:00.380 um he was a salesman and i i have always felt if he were alive today and we were to send him

00:13:08.580 to afghanistan or iraq those people would become our friends because he would he would go find

00:13:17.980 something to like about them and he would and he would show that to the world and to himself as

00:13:25.200 he would see any person and and recognize their their value um one of the most moving things my father

00:13:34.620 died at the end of of uh our making of we were soldiers and the last time i saw him he was uh on the set of

00:13:43.580 our movie the last time i saw him uh before he went to the hospital and got sick and um uh and when he

00:13:53.260 passed away i wrote the lyrics to the hymn mansions of the lord about my father and um when i was back

00:14:02.840 working on the the post-production of the movie um one of the vietnamese guys who worked on the movie

00:14:09.640 came i tell the story in the book he came up to me and and in this broken english he said mr randy i

00:14:16.420 i'm so sad about your father and i said thank you very much and he said i spoke with your father and

00:14:22.900 i said yeah thank you let's get back to work because i didn't want to get emotional again it was only like

00:14:28.420 a week after my father's funeral and um this young man said no you listen to me and i stopped and

00:14:36.160 he said your father asked me where is your father and i said my father died in vietnam and your father

00:14:48.040 said to me then i'll be your father um complete stranger um it you know it moves me now it i can barely

00:14:59.980 tell the story um and i'm quick to add that i i told this guy very fast listen if you think that

00:15:07.220 makes you an heir and you're gonna get any inheritance you can give that up you're not

00:15:11.540 you're not getting any money but uh uh but that was the way my father was and um he didn't want me to

00:15:19.860 be a writer um he wanted me to do something secure as every father wants to see their sons be safe

00:15:28.460 and yet he was proud of me for going out into the battlefield of hollywood and no one was

00:15:37.080 more proud of braveheart or anything else i did than my father and one thing about fathers and i think

00:15:42.720 a lot of men have experienced this and women too with their parents is that you think they're

00:15:48.320 superheroes right that they're invincible yes and but then there's always that moment something

00:15:54.200 happens in their life and you see the chink in the armor for the first time and you see that 1.00

00:15:59.280 they're vulnerable and that they're they're not super superheroes um and you had that experience

00:16:05.660 with your dad and can you talk a little bit about that and how that even though it was his darkest

00:16:11.540 moment how that how you became stronger how you became stronger from it that's the been in many

00:16:19.800 ways the great mystery of my life and and it's something that i refer to in the book as the wound

00:16:25.700 um that i realized as you as you say my father was wounded under his armor and he was bleeding there

00:16:34.040 and and maybe had always been in part because he didn't have a father of his own in part because of

00:16:40.980 what the loss of her young husband had done to my grandmother and the way she had been to raise him

00:16:48.860 but when my father who had had a really meteoric rise in business in the 1950s he had gone from

00:16:57.680 um being a an apprentice salesman trainee in a national candy company to being a divisional sales

00:17:10.100 manager he was head of several states um the salesman in all those states um and then um

00:17:18.680 and he and he had a swagger and he had a confidence he he was never overconfident it we um he lived

00:17:25.720 really frugally uh far below our means uh as i would come to find out later but um he he was they the

00:17:35.300 company was sold to a bunch of uh mbas who believed the way to increase profits was to fire all the old 1.00

00:17:43.340 guys that were making high salaries and he was one of the old guys at 38 and they fired him

00:17:51.720 and the idea that anybody would fire my father just broke him he couldn't he he'd never experienced

00:18:00.340 anything like failure he had been trained by his mother to believe that he had to be perfect in

00:18:05.060 everything and the idea that anybody would not want him on a company that he'd given his heart and soul

00:18:11.800 to um really shattered him and i also think he felt he didn't have any safety net and he began to doubt

00:18:19.700 his own strength his own confidence um i say in the book that that we're all have to see ourselves as

00:18:29.200 fathers even if it's not biological father but you have to find a father and you have to be a father

00:18:35.780 even if it's not your biological child you need to be a teacher and have a teacher you need to be a

00:18:42.340 warrior and be in the company of warriors um and i believe my father lost his warrior spirit

00:18:50.080 uh for a time and as you say it was it was devastating to him and devastating to us to see

00:18:58.140 our father who who was always so confident always knew what to do and to see him have a nervous

00:19:04.880 breakdown what it also did for me brett was it when when the time came when i thought this was about

00:19:12.480 to happen to happen to me when i felt my own um confidence and my own nerves and even my own body

00:19:21.120 rebelling when i felt so um desperate that uh my my career seemed to be unraveling and i'd always used

00:19:32.360 work as my weapon determination uh when i started my career i said to myself i can't guarantee that i have

00:19:42.400 the talent the talent to make it but what will never stop me will be a fear of failure or a lack

00:19:49.340 of trying and uh and i found a time in my life when i was afraid and and couldn't even seem to get

00:19:58.760 myself um out of this cramp of of emotion and um and my i remembered my father and the way he had

00:20:08.500 he had hit the bottom and then he had worked his way back to the top and a top much higher than he'd

00:20:15.320 ever thought and that's what happened with me i i i got down on my knees and prayed sincerely

00:20:21.700 if i go down in this fight let me go down with my flag flying not worshiping a false idol of what

00:20:30.800 hollywood says we should go after and be uh let me let me write the kind of story that is me that gives

00:20:38.780 me goosebumps that brings tears to my eyes or or makes me laugh out loud i will do that and i'll take

00:20:47.600 whatever the result is and had it not been for my father showing me the way a man is my father couldn't 0.99

00:20:55.580 teach me to write but he could show me what a man was that's what a father is yeah i love that and

00:21:02.240 you call those moments uh braveheart moments right those moments where you have to dig deep and really

00:21:09.540 you know find out you know what you really believe in and then go for that yes exactly you've got to

00:21:16.460 find out you sometimes you want to say i want to follow my beliefs but there are times come when you

00:21:22.320 go i'm not sure what i believe yeah you're right that's part of a braveheart moment yeah um so

00:21:28.460 besides fathers um friends and brothers and sisters plays a big role in living the braveheart life and

00:21:35.680 you uh you talked about one of your friends in particular that i wanted to meet the guy after

00:21:40.460 i read about him it's a bob from afghanistan can you tell us a little bit about bob and how he helped

00:21:48.100 you maybe uncover braveheart or the braveheart life in your in yourself yes i met this guy um through a

00:21:57.740 a funny uh circumstance that i described in the book um when i met him i i thought he was exactly

00:22:09.240 the kind of guy that i would hate um he he's from afghanistan i i he looked like as i say in the book

00:22:17.960 he looked kind of like a a middle eastern lounge lizard to me except that he was so strong and there

00:22:26.620 was something different and when i say a lounge lizard i mean that he was wearing like gucci clothes

00:22:33.080 and armani suits and you know when i was in shorts and a t-shirt and um uh i and he was just so elegant

00:22:43.280 and i was so uh rough and country so i just thought here's a guy i'll have nothing in common with

00:22:50.480 but i sat down across from him the first time we ever spoke and i liked him instantly he had

00:22:58.940 first of all a huge manhood about him he was he was strong and tough and the kind of strength that

00:23:08.480 makes a man look you right in the eye without without a kind of challenge just with a complete confidence

00:23:17.500 in who he is and um just this great quick laugh of poetry in his soul and he turned out to be from

00:23:27.100 afghanistan now i met him years and years before afghanistan became to us what it is today of uh

00:23:34.740 a place where where we were bogged down in in war he his his father um was the head man of the helmand

00:23:45.780 province which is today which would and it was then the way it is today this um uh hotbed of

00:23:56.700 of rebels and independence uh but i'm there's a garbage truck outside and i'm going to pause for

00:24:03.200 just a second shut the door sorry i don't you're fine i don't want to ruin the sound

00:24:08.060 knowing that you can edit yep we're good um so bob from afghanistan

00:24:20.060 came bob from afghanistan is the son of a man who was the the chief the head man the godfather if you

00:24:30.300 will of the entire helmand province and the his mother was part of the royal family of afghanistan

00:24:39.400 afghanistan and uh he had this incredibly um rich background in afghanistan but he had come to america

00:24:50.260 with a few hundred dollars in his pocket knowing only a couple of words of english

00:24:55.700 um he worked three or four jobs he was educated um his formal education here at a community college

00:25:04.580 and he became a spectacularly successful businessman um but what he taught me

00:25:12.720 was that here he was from the other side of the world from a culture radically different from mine

00:25:23.240 um i grew up in a christian family he grew up with a mother who prayed multiple times a day and his

00:25:31.500 father was head of this entire muslim culture um he does not himself uh practice islam and he and i've

00:25:40.160 talked a great deal about my faith um but i must say i respect i respect his no matter what the label is

00:25:48.440 that he puts on it um but i found that we were brothers that we were um we love the same things

00:25:57.400 um and that all of the work and struggle that he has gone through in his life um where his all of his

00:26:09.980 brothers except one have died um in many ways in the fight for independence uh for afghanistan um when the

00:26:19.960 russians were there and in various other struggles um and all the all the the hard battles that he has fought

00:26:32.440 in his life have not taken his spirit in fact he viewed them i think as um a chance to be what he is

00:26:43.600 supposed to be those are the battles that a man must fight so he is a man and they're his battles and he

00:26:53.080 fights them um and he he grieves deeply uh when he loses someone he loves i've seen that happen i saw him

00:27:02.600 when he lost one of his brothers um but he he overcomes that he he is a man in full and the idea

00:27:13.540 that here he is so different from me and yet we have this brotherhood in common um is one of the

00:27:20.740 the clearest examples to me of of what it means to have a brother and how important it is what a rich

00:27:30.300 treasure it is um i was once asked a question about um why i make movies about honor and and courage and

00:27:40.860 sacrifice it was a a japanese writer who asked me and um i'd never been asked a question like that it

00:27:48.680 was around my first movie man in the iron mask and i said well i suppose it's because the second

00:27:56.620 greatest wealth any man can have in life is to have someone in his life who would die for him

00:28:02.460 but the greatest wealth you can have is someone in your life you would die for

00:28:06.740 and this japanese writer said

00:28:10.040 the translator translated it um he says that you're a samurai and when you come to tokyo he wants to get

00:28:22.580 drunk with you um and i think that a man in japan a man in afghanistan and a man in america

00:28:31.740 we're all men and when when a man is a man uh when a man has that has that attitude of there's

00:28:40.620 something greater than my own physical survival uh then you have a brotherhood and you found somebody

00:28:47.800 that will inspire you and that's what bob does for me yeah that's amazing um and i think you're

00:28:52.620 right i think across cultures men understand that they understand when when someone says you need to

00:28:58.720 be a man some people will will inevitably fall on the sort of the tropes of masculinity that you know

00:29:05.060 sort of shallow ones but i think most men deep down know no it means you got to be brave you have

00:29:10.700 to have a sense of honor you have to have a sense of uh love like a deep like what would you call

00:29:15.580 fraternity or brotherhood um yeah i think your movies do hit on that big time brett what you just

00:29:22.460 said when we hear in our current culture you've got to be a man what that often connotes is the

00:29:33.560 opposite of what being a man is being a man when when that said i thought it means you're supposed

00:29:42.500 to ignore pain you're supposed to mask off your emotions you're supposed to stop being honest

00:29:50.720 um now of course there are times when we say i've got a man up here meaning i've got to overcome these

00:29:57.760 things but it doesn't mean let's ignore them let's pretend that we don't have them um and those men

00:30:05.340 across cultures i think what you're describing here is we're recognizing in each other that the cost

00:30:13.560 of um of caring of loving of having loyalty and honor there is a cost and you see in the other man

00:30:23.980 this is the guy who pays that bill and that's a man that i want to be like

00:30:30.420 yeah um so one of the things i love about braveheart i think a lot of men love about it is

00:30:37.360 that it is like some people call it the manliest chick flick ever made um because in the end the

00:30:44.080 movie is about love it's about the love of family the love of country the love of people the love of

00:30:51.040 freedom and it seems like braveheart is the very the great incapulation of this idea that

00:30:58.060 to be a man is to both cultivate hard and soft virtues um how do you think men and there are not

00:31:06.800 talking about military guys just everyday guys can cultivate those sort of braveheart virtues that

00:31:12.820 are both hard and soft wow that's such a great question and i i think that um on a practical level

00:31:22.180 it's that we need to be in relationship with each other with other men and we need to to have

00:31:32.880 relationships with women that you know i say in in the book that um a man who does not honor women can

00:31:42.000 never live a braveheart life it doesn't mean we have to agree with them or do what women seem to try 1.00

00:31:49.340 to get us to do and look i um i can't i can't claim i've been divorced for 15 years i can't claim that

00:31:57.940 i'm an expert in in a male female relationships but i do believe that women will on the surface be trying 1.00

00:32:08.680 to get us to stop being men and yet the last thing they want us to do is to stop being men

00:32:15.920 they desperately need us to be men just as we need them to be women and there there are differences

00:32:24.980 thank god i mean god made them difference made us different and um uh and for us to revel in those

00:32:33.760 differences is is part of the the beauty of life um i think that to be a braveheart man

00:32:42.400 means that you you face fears rather than run from them that's one of the first things you cannot

00:32:50.360 i mean bravery means um uh being yourself in the face of danger or fear uh sometimes the danger isn't

00:33:02.280 nearly as great as the fear is and the only way we can find that out is by looking the fear in the face

00:33:09.520 um i i had a period of my life um and i still of course have it from time to time but um it was

00:33:19.100 around the time of my divorce when i would get out of bed in the morning and get on my knees and pray

00:33:24.860 with all my heart for the strength to have to get through the day with courage and um and not be not

00:33:35.220 be dragged down in despair and that night when i would start to crawl back into bed i'd get down

00:33:41.580 on my knees again to say thank you i got through this day and and i realized i did have courage in

00:33:49.900 that day and the only way you can have courage is if there's something in your life that that is

00:33:56.440 dangerous to you we want to have the opportunity to be courageous and the only way we can do that

00:34:06.300 is by stepping forward into the arena where something is at risk our ego our finances our physical

00:34:18.720 comfort um comfort uh but that is the only place where courage is required and and a brave heart

00:34:29.120 feeds off of courage and courage uh only exists in the presence of fear so fear isn't a bad thing it's just a

00:34:40.160 factor um it's a reality of um of that dynamic of of the presence of courage

00:34:51.220 so it seems like i just remarked our talking that faith is a really big thing in your life an important

00:35:00.600 thing and when i was thinking about it last night uh about brave heart it is in a way not only a story

00:35:06.160 of love it is a story of faith in a lot of ways that william wallace had this belief in scotland that

00:35:13.020 he couldn't see but he believed in it and he thought it was true and he did all he could to make it work

00:35:18.980 so in a way it is it is a story of faith so i'm curious what role does faith fit into living the brave

00:35:25.920 heart life brett i i believe that these words that we use faith courage love hope are in many ways

00:35:42.800 the same thing yeah i know i know we use them in different contexts and and they have different

00:35:50.940 connotations to us but they all mean the same thing that william wallace

00:35:56.720 love the at least the william wallace that i wrote uh i have to you know i i tell the story in the

00:36:05.340 book that like on the wall of the air force academy are the words they may take our lives but they'll

00:36:12.240 never take our freedom and the attribution under them is william wallace well william wallace

00:36:17.320 didn't say that i but he said it now william wallace said it now that's right it's my ego

00:36:24.240 talk yeah but the william wallace that that i wrote um loved his country so much and i believe the real

00:36:34.560 one too by the way that that he loved his country so much that he thought the only way i can help

00:36:43.560 scotland be free i can contribute that i can i can allow that dream to to still breathe is if i am

00:36:54.160 willing to put myself in the hands of people who have already betrayed me um and this of course

00:37:04.140 the does not come from my reading the encyclopedia britannica about william wallace it comes from my

00:37:10.780 reading the new testament about jesus of nazareth uh that that is the that is the story that that

00:37:18.660 comes from but my um but i don't wrap my understanding in a given doctrine or our terms um when people

00:37:33.960 will ask me about uh you know say well can an atheist go to heaven or um you know i have these

00:37:40.920 wonderful discussions with various friends of mine um great writers who are um even greater friends and

00:37:50.940 um and some of them call themselves atheists or agnostics or various other forms of religion

00:37:58.180 and and i always tell them look there's a a passage in the bible something jesus said and i feel

00:38:06.500 absolutely certain that he said it very much exactly as we have it in the bible he tells a parable of a

00:38:15.760 a father says to his two sons go to work in my field and one son says i will and he doesn't and the

00:38:25.660 other son says i won't and he does and jesus says to the people he's teaching so which one did the will

00:38:33.980 of his father and i take that in terms of the labels we use for ourselves when we talk about faith

00:38:41.040 um you know there are people that say i'm a believer but you say well do you do the will of god

00:38:49.680 and there are other people say i don't believe in any of that but you look in their lives and you

00:38:55.600 think they manifest love and faith and courage and and i say to myself i don't judge i i thank heaven

00:39:06.260 i'm not the person who decides um where whether somebody is in heaven or not and uh and i i do believe

00:39:15.880 that heaven is here um and i think you know jesus taught heaven is all around us but i try not ever

00:39:25.240 to get wrapped up in arguing about labels i get wrapped up in are we doing the will of the spirit

00:39:34.780 that made us that made the universe the what what made the stars made us and um and i believe we're made

00:39:44.160 for our purpose uh and i believe that purpose is love and i believe that that courage is one of the

00:39:52.400 manifestations of that so that's all yeah that's my understanding of the moment sure and when you bring

00:40:00.180 that like following that will right however you want to describe it that can be a very scary thing

00:40:04.900 right like you you get this thing like you you get this feeling or this compulsion this is what i need

00:40:10.000 to do but then all around you you have these well no if i do that that i might lose my job uh my yes

00:40:17.240 friends might laugh at me yes it's it's it can be terrifying at times yes and i i very early on

00:40:25.040 um very early on i made the linkage of if i try something bold daring even reckless

00:40:36.740 i will feel better uh i will feel better about the result than if i never attempt something like

00:40:43.980 that i like myself better and i feel more myself when i'm doing something crazy like i'll write a

00:40:53.460 screenplay i'll write a novel i'll write a song i believe that writing is an act of faith is an act

00:41:01.060 of courage um i believe what you do is exactly the same i whenever you speak the very notion that you

00:41:09.560 have something to contribute um is certainly an act of courage listening his too of course um but

00:41:18.080 uh i think the very fact that we are on this planet we find ourselves uh as boys or girls

00:41:29.980 when we become aware okay i'm here i came from someplace i when i i've described this in the book that

00:41:39.540 i i watched a son being born i've seen all my sons be born and shortly after one of them was born

00:41:47.920 i watched my mother breathe her last breath and you look at a child coming into the world

00:41:56.000 and i cannot witness that without feeling i have just witnessed an overwhelming miracle

00:42:05.400 um and when i see someone that i love as dearly as we love our mothers breathe her last breath and i look

00:42:16.300 at what was once her body and now it looks like a husk i understand why human beings have always

00:42:24.700 grappled with this and had a sense of soul or spirit of look for a word because she was no longer there

00:42:32.960 um and um we whenever we have that experience when we find ourselves saying okay i am here i am in this

00:42:44.500 world i don't know where i came from i'm not sure what's on the other side of this life

00:42:49.980 but why am i here and you're either going to behave as if that was a random accident or you're going to

00:42:58.560 behave as if it's a gift then and you are given it for some reason and it's not yours forever and that's

00:43:08.400 why i believe every man dies but not every man really lives and our whole purpose is to find a way to be

00:43:19.380 really alive but we're going to end on that um because that's a great way to end randall wallace

00:43:25.800 thank you so much for your time this has been an absolute pleasure brad thank you so much can't

00:43:31.600 wait to do it again and i will anytime with you buddy this is wonderful thank you thank you my guest

00:43:37.760 today is randall wallace he's the author of the book living the brave heart life finding the courage

00:43:42.040 to follow your heart it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere go out and get it it's a

00:43:46.260 really great read well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for

00:43:54.080 more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com

00:43:58.260 and if you enjoy the podcast i'd really appreciate it if you'd give us a review on itunes or stitcher

00:44:02.580 help us out giving us some feedback on how we can improve it as well as getting the word out about

00:44:06.320 the podcast thanks again for your support and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay

00:44:10.300 manly

The Art of Manliness - October 06, 2015

#144： Living the Braveheart Life With Randall Wallace

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