“There are three ways to ultimate success: The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind.”
When I was five years old, laying in a hotel bed on the morning of the second day of my family’s road trip to Florida, my dad turned the tv on. He was going to get breakfast for us while my mom stayed and packed. My sisters were still sleeping, while I lay there not paying much attention to Sesame Street. In fact, I didn’t even realize it was over until a song broke into my wandering mind.
It was, of course, the theme song to Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. I smiled at the song and this genial man walking through his house. My smile got larger as I watched him change jackets and then his shoes, tossing his right shoe in his left hand with a chuckle.
“Hello, neighbor,” he said, and I truly believed he talked to me.
It’s been eighteen years since that day and I still have never forgotten the impact of that one moment. Of course, it was not the only moment in my life that was impacted by Fred Rogers. In fact, for the next eight years, I planned my schedule around watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. He was on at eleven-thirty every weekday and I made sure to watch, sometimes doing homework early, sometimes doing chores later. My sisters never understood my fascination with his show (opting to watch animated shows instead). After all, what ten-year-old would want to watch an elderly man play with puppets or build a tent?
I don’t blame them. I’m an old soul and constantly feel like I was born in the wrong era. And there was something about watching an elderly man change into a housecoat, smile at the camera and feed his goldfish that sparked my imagination. It was all neat and tidy, everything was explained and organized, and it made me happy in my strange OCD way.
When I was thirteen, for several reasons, (he TV breaking, PBS airing the show earlier, then removing it completely), my fascination and love of the show and Fred Rogers diminished. It became like some long-forgotten dream, beautiful yet childish, something I should smile at wistfully and grow up from. It took me a while to realize how wrong I was.
In the next five years, I went through some of the hardest struggles in my life so far. My faith, my health (both mental and physical), waned to near breaking points. My scoliosis surgery took a far greater toll than I thought it would, and other personal matters affected me deeply. One of the more positive things that came out of that time was that I no longer thought I should grow up and be less childish. There’s a difference between immaturity and childishness. I had to fall apart to realize that. I had to break to build myself again into something stronger and new. I was writing as never before. It was my island of peace, my fortress of solitude among a sea of restless torment.
When I was eighteen, things took a turn for the better. My faith was renewed, my writing was improving and I had finally graduated from high school. Of course, my trials were far from over but I was learning to step over the stumbling blocks, rather than trip and fall on my face. I returned to my fascination with Mister Rogers. And realized I should have never left.
Rewatching things from your childhood has a strange, nostalgic feel to it. You pick up things you didn’t before. Themes become oddly different. And that’s what happened upon re-viewing Mister Rogers. Whereas before I had seen a grandfatherly figure who awakened my imagination and wanted to create new worlds, now I saw a friend, a happy companion who understood what it was to be sad and angry, and what it was to forgive and love. By rediscovering him, I found an acceptance of myself, a push to continue to do what I was passionate about. In his strange way, he saved me.
I went away again from his world of make-believe, but I didn’t forget him this time. I kept him in the background of my mind, an inspiration, a life-preserver in case of emergency.
I think it’s such a wondrous thing that two shows had such an impact on my life so as to save it. Two shows that were so different in so many ways. And I realized that where Mister Rogers stepped back, so Supernatural stepped forward pushing me back to Mister Rogers in an ebb and flow between the two. And so, life went on.
Last year, I heard that they were making a movie about Mister Rogers with the Mister Rogers of Hollywood, Tom Hanks, and they put out a wonderful documentary about Fred Rogers as well. You can well imagine how very excited I have been for the last year and a half. I was five again, watching both films, this time on a large screen. It was fascinating watching Tom Hanks step into this iconic role, as he changed into his housecoat and smiled at the screen, smiled at me, saying, “Hello, neighbor.” I adored it. As I practically sobbed throughout the entire film, I fully enjoyed and appreciated the themes they chose to use in the movie.
Themes of forgiveness and hope, grief and faith. Themes that might seem too adult to be presented in a children’s show, such as death and divorce, were discussed in this movie. Because, as Mister Rogers says in the film, “We are trying to give the world positive ways of dealing with their feelings.” And so, as an adult, I was reminded of how important it is to deal with your feelings.
As someone who keeps their emotions in a bottle placed carefully on a shelf, dealing with feelings is not something I do easily. But neither did the main character in “It’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”. He too was cynical, rational and didn’t understand why dealing with your emotions positively was important.
But see, that’s the magic word: positively. We deal with our emotions every day whether we believe it or not, and if we aren’t dealing with them positively, we are dealing with them negatively. If we aren’t looking on the bright side, aren’t praying or reflecting, aren’t trying to take a difficulty in our life and forgive every aspect of it, then we are getting lost in the woods, in the mire of depression and anxiety with no road map of how to get out.
It’s important we know this. It’s important we teach children this. And it’s especially important for us as adults to remember this. If we can’t take care of ourselves, we can’t take care of anyone else. And we need to reach out, not only to help but to ask for help. To quote Fred, “Sometimes we have to ask for help, and that’s okay”.
It’s also important that we are okay with dealing with all our emotions, not just the positive ones. It’s important to talk about everything. Because, “Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable”.
We are “fearfully and wonderfully made” and every human thing we do or feel is just that, human. And so, we should understand it, accept it and help the good things grow while gently working out the bad.
One final note; at the end of the film, Fred Rogers, after finishing an episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, sat at his piano as the set slowly dimmed, as the crew filed out, and the room emptied. He started with a slow, happy tune, paused, quickly slammed all the lowest keys of the piano at the same time and then went back to playing his happy tune – as he said, “We are trying to give the world positive ways of dealing with their feelings. There are many things you can do. You can play all the lowest keys on a piano at the same time”.
And so even Mister Rogers had to deal with feelings; even he was human. And I think that’s one of the most inspirational and motivating things I can know. He just worked daily on being good, and we can too.
The impact that Fred Rogers, and others like him, had on the world cannot be condensed to a few sentences. Without him, without them, there would be such a shortage of kindness and hope that many of us, including myself, would be lost in the woods, with no chance of finding our way out, and I do believe some of us would not even be alive today. I am one of those people. Because people like Mister Rogers are not saints, they themselves do not save us from damnation. Rather, they give us a road map out of the woods and point us in the direction of the only truly perfect Being.
Mister Rogers and his children’s show gave me a guide to the right path and helped me onto my feet with a smile and an ever so kind, “Hello, neighbor,” and I am forever grateful for it.
“I think the best thing we can do is to let people know that each one of them is precious.”
“But the very same people who are down sometimes
are the very same people who are happy sometimes.
It’s the same for me,
isn’t it the same for you?”