If you are in a place, #12: Mister Rogers and the Senate

Mister Rogers defending PBS to the US Senate - YouTube

Mister Rogers and the Senate

If you are in a place, watch Mister Rogers discuss his show before the US Senate. Mister Rogers said perhaps my favorite thing about love:

Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like “struggle.” To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.

It is hard to love people. We don’t honor that enough. The best love is work. It is hard to love ourselves. Sometimes, I think among the scariest things about life is that it is often hard to love ourselves as much as other people love us. That line from “Amazing Grace”, right? At my worst moments, I think so often of the people I’ve surrounded myself with in my adult life and how lucky I am that they could love a wretch like me.

I wasn’t into Mister Rogers when I was a kid. I gravitated more towards colorful cartoons about humanoid turtles and confused detectives. But since I’ve become a teacher, I’ve grown to appreciate his philosophy. In this video, he defends his show and PBS in front of a Senate committee in hopes of retaining funding for the channel.

Here, he says (and perhaps long ahead of its time):

I end my show every day by saying: ‘You’ve made this day a special day by just your being you. There’s no person in the whole world like you, and I like you just the way you are.’ And I feel that if we can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable AND manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health.

We can only be so lucky to fall into the hands of people who love us wholly, who see us fully, who love us just the way we are. Like Mister Rogers did.