Fred Rogers, beloved television icon, holds a very special place in my heart… as well as the hearts of millions of others who grew up watching his groundbreaking television series. As a Saint Vincent College student, I didn’t realize what an impact that a little, soft-spoken, gentle human being could have on my life until recently. And that’s when my life changed immensely.
Last weekend, after a particularly long day, my best friend asked me to come over for a movie night. I made several lame excuses saying I should get ahead on reading or my roommate needed my help, but he wasn’t buying it. He told me it was a new movie and I’d love it. Unenthusiastically, I made my way downstairs to see that the movie was already queued up and playing an all-too-familiar tune: Mr. Rogers Neighborhood theme. I knew I made the right choice to be at movie night that night.
Image Credit: The Atlantic
We watched the latest Fred Rogers’ documentary, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, and I think I managed to NOT cry for a combined five minutes of the film. The very opening of the film captured my heart as I saw footage of Mr. Rogers, my hero, sitting at a piano, beckoning viewers to come to him, discussing possible themes for his television show. Seeing him without his trademark sweater and Keds was almost a shock to me but I was too distracted by what he had to say. “Come on over a minute,” he said. “It seems to me that there are different themes in life, and one of my main jobs, it seems to me, is to help, through the mass media for children, to help children through some of the difficult modulations of life.”
Life is not always a walk in the park, and Mr. Rogers knew that. He knew that children were often too confused or too afraid to ask questions about sensitive topics like death, or their changing bodies. He pushed boundaries, making subtle but overtly political comments about the tragic incidents occurring in the United States. Mr. Rogers choosing to share a little pool with Officer Clemmons, who was portrayed by a black actor and would eventually come out as gay, showed that Mr. Rogers was not afraid of diversity and protested the regressive politicians who thought that blacks and other minorities were inferior.
Image Credit: Vanity Fair
One of his specialties was discussing the hundreds of emotions that human beings experience, and those were the episodes that I personally connected with. I have always been an emotional person and to hear someone like Mr. Rogers say that my emotions were valid and that I needed to find ways to express them constructively was something that my childhood self could not comprehend fully. Now as a young adult, who experiences several conflicting emotions daily, I finally understood what Mr. Rogers meant.
That was the beauty of Mr. Rogers; his message wasn’t just for children, it was for adults too. To know that no matter how old we get that we can still manage our feelings constructively means so much. Mr. Rogers knew what fears children and adults had, and instead of shying away from them and masking them, he brought them into the light and openly discussed them. From body issues to divorcing parents and death, Mr. Rogers covered everything, and to know that I could turn to him for advice, gentleness, and compassion made him a hero in my eyes.
From being the nice old guy that I watched on my Saturday morning PBS cartoons to the man whose level of kindness and compassion I strived to achieve. The invitation to be his neighbor wasn’t extended to just children, or those who needed help, but rather to all human beings, as Mr. Rogers loved every single person, just the way they are. Today, it may seem like there is little to no love in the world. That is our challenge today: to take up Mr. Rogers’ mission and love everyone as “the greatest thing that we can do is to help somebody know that they’re loved and capable of loving.”
HCXO,
Catherine