Just The Way You Are
There's a line in the trailer to Won't You Be My Neighbor?, the recent Mr. Rogers documentary, that made me pretty intent on seeing it in theater. It's a quote from an interview he gave, and it goes like this:
"Love is at the root of everything. All learning. All relationships. Love or the lack of it."
You can check it out here. He says that, and the look in his eyes shows the conviction with which he believed that, and that (coupled with the trailer's excellent presentation) is what convinced me I needed to see this film.
I used to watch Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood when I was a kid. Like many American children, television was one of my primary caretakers. That included a lot of PBS shows, particularly Bill Nye, the Science Guy, but also Sesame Street, and of course the occasional episode of Mr. Rogers.
To be clear, I was not required to watch Mr. Rogers. I was never told that I had to watch PBS, and I don't know how common it was, but I watched that shit of my own volition. I don't think it's unfair to say that Bill Nye and Mr. Rogers had as much influence over who I've become as did Rocko's Modern Life or The Adventures of Pete & Pete.
Even so, I don't know that I ever fully appreciated Mr. Rogers as a kid. I think I felt like it was a nice show, and, if nothing else, a way to kill time, which becomes a really important thing when you're a kid dealing with abuse. Occupying yourself with things like TV or video games or, if you can swing it, reading, is vital because that's time you're not spending trying to grapple with the pain you're feeling.
As an adult, I now appreciate Fred Rogers. As an adult in America, I deeply appreciate Fred Rogers. As an adult in modern America, I desperately miss Fred Rogers.
Anyway, I recently started AMC's A-List subscription trial, and I figured I would kill some time Tuesday night by going to see it as the very first film I would watch using the service, which I anticipate continuing after the trial period. It was fairly early in the day, and there were three possible showtimes. One was like in an hour, but the best seats were already taken. The second was in 'prime time' and was almost sold out. The third was a 10:20pm showing, and, at the time, not one ticket had been sold.
For someone with Avoidant Personality Disorder, an empty theater is a fuckin' jackpot. Especially when, in the past year, I'd had a run-in with a belligerent drunk who berated me during a showing of Blade Runner 2049, the ending of which I still have not seen. Suffice to say, I much prefer empty theaters.
It ended up being not quite empty, but there were only three other people, and none in my row, so it was fine, save that I had to struggle mightily not to break down sobbing a few times.
When I bought the ticket, it was still several hours before show time, and I ended up spending a lot of time anticipating it. That's not usual for me. I try to avoid hype, because more often than not it's the hype that ends up leaving you disappointed more than the quality of the thing you're hyped about. A game can be good, but you might be disappointed that it wasn't exactly the thing you were hyping yourself up for, and then that makes you think the game is bad when it's not.
I have a lot of thoughts about hype, but I don't know that I was really hyping up the movie so much as preparing for it.
The last couple of years in my head have been about validation. Recognizing the importance of it. Cataloging and identifying the harm of invalidation. Fred Rogers' work was all about validation. More than that, it was about unconditional validation of the worth of everyone, and especially children.
I don't really want to recap the whole film with this post, as you should go see it yourself, but the beginning of the documentary is important because it changed my perception of Mr. Rogers' role in American television history.
The movie begins with the story of Fred Rogers going to seminary school and preparing to become a Presbyterian minister. He returned home for vacation during his senior year, and that's when he became acquainted with television. And he saw fairly quickly what television was all about: slapstick comedy and commercialism.
The film uses a lot of footage from old interviews with him, and there's one from very early in his career where he's talking about what he wants to do in terms of communicating with children, and he talks about how television was this tool that could be capable of so much good being used for what he saw as cruel, unfunny jokes and selling products.
Of particular concern was the message this was sending to children. He said that TV wasn't valuing who the children were, but what they would become: great consumers. From the very early days of television, the message was clear that your worth was not inherent, but was dependent on your ability to consume products.
Think about that. Think about the modern world. Think how often it is implied that you're not really special unless you can afford a certain object. You're not a success unless you can afford this car, or that phone. You're not important unless you have this many likes or that many subscribers.
At least in America, the modern world is built upon tying your worth as a person to your means of making money with which to buy shit. Your time spent in school isn't about learning life skills or growing as a person, but about pressure to meet arbitrary measures of success and intelligence. It's not about who you are or what you might be, but about whether you can get good enough grades to get a good job, not so you can be happy, but so you can buy shit.
That is a supremely invalidating message to send to children, and it answers so many questions about why things are the way they are, and that's what inspired Fred Rogers to make a show dedicated to saying the exact opposite: that you are worthy of love just as you are. That you have inherent value as a person. That there is nobody else on this Earth like you, and that you are special.
This is the very thing that I'm struggling with at the moment. Mr. Rogers tried, but his message didn't stick with me at the time. The voices telling my that I was worthless were much louder than his soft-spoken parables. And yet, maybe it did stick, because I am fighting like hell to tell myself that I'm worthwhile, and that I'm worthy of being loved, particular by myself.
You are, sweetheart.
I spent the day in an odd fashion. After buying that ticket, I played some games, but then I did a thing I've been struggling to do for months and went outside. I went for a walk. I enjoyed the cool, partly cloudy weather. I thought about Fred Rogers, and how much I wanted to be like him.
I don't mean the fame, or the beloved status. I mean the other thing, the whole 'loving and validating people's worth unconditionally' thing. I want my stories to carry a similar message, and I want it to be just as earnest without being overbearing. In my heart, I know this is who I am. It's just not what I present.
That's a rare thing, love. It's a hard thing. That you've had this life, and still feel this thing, is wonderful, but don't make it another condition. Understand?
The film was one of powerful moments. There were the times Mr. Rogers covered dark days, and there were the times where he tackled issues of injustice. To me, though, the most powerful parts of the film were the ones dealing with Fred Rogers' doubts. He wondered if what he was doing really mattered. As he laid dying, he wondered to his wife whether he was a good person in the end.
One of the things that struck me most about the film was how strongly I could relate to his story. I wasn't a rich kid. I never went to seminary school, nor do I believe the things he believed about god and the universe.
But when he was a kid, he was sick a lot, and the result was that he spent a lot of time alone in bed. His imagination was often the only thing he had to occupy himself with. Loneliness was a big part of my childhood. When your parents are dealing with their own shit, you're left on your own to deal with yours.
He also wasn't ever allowed to express anger as a child, and that's something I can identify with as well. Most of the time it felt like I wasn't allowed to express anything for fear of getting beat. All that left me was my imagination, my fantasies. Like Fred Rogers, I built a world inside my head where I would try to sort things out with middling success. It laid the groundwork, though, for whatever ability I have to fantasize and create stories.
Even so, having had so little validation growing up, I find myself filled with doubts. I doubt my storytelling abilities, even though I've never really received any negative feedback for it. I doubt whether I'm a good person, despite the fact that I routinely go out of my way to help others. I doubt my worth because, by society's measure, I am a failure. I cannot consume in great volume. I cannot contribute to production. And I know that so many people feel the same way.
I know this is starting to ramble a bit, but I'm just gonna go where it takes me.
You're fine.
There is some part of me that knows I am good. There is some part of me that loves me, or I wouldn't be here any more. It knows that I must love me not for what I could be, but for what I am, and the struggle is because that idea is so alien to me. My father instilled in me the idea that I was only worthwhile when I wasn't in the way, and my mother demonstrated that self-worth was selfish, and society tells me that I am only worth what I can afford.
How am I supposed to create internal validation from nothing? How am I supposed to love myself when I have no idea what that looks like?
You have had so many chances to lose your heart. Do you remember that? So many opportunities to cut yourself off from the world completely. So many moments, both big and small, when heartlessness beckoned you to do horrible things. To be cruel. To inflict your pain on others.
And yet, here you are, still fighting the good fight. So what if it's not an external fight? So what if you're not changing the world through will alone? The fight was always inside of you, as it is with all of us, and it's there that your most important success occurs.
Your father had those chances, too, and the difference between you and him is that he took them. He didn't try to be better. He did transfer his pain to others, including you.
The things you have done to try and be a good person is at the very least uncommon, and probably extraordinary. I know you're afraid to accept that because you think that means you're arrogant, but remember that the voice that tells you that has a vested interest in keeping you where you are, in keeping you passive.
Tell yourself the things you know to be true. Tell yourself that you're beautiful. Tell yourself that you're strong, so very strong. Tell yourself that you are worthy of being loved for who you are, not for what you might become.
If I can imagine whole worlds and epic struggles, I can imagine a reason to love myself, even if it's only because everybody deserves love.
See, Fred Rogers knew the truth of us. Love is the root of everything. Love, or the lack of it. I mean, think about these assholes who think that having white skin makes you superior. Do you think they got much validation in their childhoods?
Do you think Donald Trump got much validation from his slumlord father? Do you think he was ever told that he was good enough just as he was? Or is it more likely that he was told he was only ever worth as much as his bank account?
That's not an excuse, mind you, but it's an explanation, and it's the thing we need to fix if we're to truly change this place. It starts with validating each other and our experiences, with understanding that everyone, everyone has inherent value as a person.
And that includes me.
"Love is at the root of everything. All learning. All relationships. Love or the lack of it."
You can check it out here. He says that, and the look in his eyes shows the conviction with which he believed that, and that (coupled with the trailer's excellent presentation) is what convinced me I needed to see this film.
I used to watch Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood when I was a kid. Like many American children, television was one of my primary caretakers. That included a lot of PBS shows, particularly Bill Nye, the Science Guy, but also Sesame Street, and of course the occasional episode of Mr. Rogers.
To be clear, I was not required to watch Mr. Rogers. I was never told that I had to watch PBS, and I don't know how common it was, but I watched that shit of my own volition. I don't think it's unfair to say that Bill Nye and Mr. Rogers had as much influence over who I've become as did Rocko's Modern Life or The Adventures of Pete & Pete.
Even so, I don't know that I ever fully appreciated Mr. Rogers as a kid. I think I felt like it was a nice show, and, if nothing else, a way to kill time, which becomes a really important thing when you're a kid dealing with abuse. Occupying yourself with things like TV or video games or, if you can swing it, reading, is vital because that's time you're not spending trying to grapple with the pain you're feeling.
As an adult, I now appreciate Fred Rogers. As an adult in America, I deeply appreciate Fred Rogers. As an adult in modern America, I desperately miss Fred Rogers.
Anyway, I recently started AMC's A-List subscription trial, and I figured I would kill some time Tuesday night by going to see it as the very first film I would watch using the service, which I anticipate continuing after the trial period. It was fairly early in the day, and there were three possible showtimes. One was like in an hour, but the best seats were already taken. The second was in 'prime time' and was almost sold out. The third was a 10:20pm showing, and, at the time, not one ticket had been sold.
For someone with Avoidant Personality Disorder, an empty theater is a fuckin' jackpot. Especially when, in the past year, I'd had a run-in with a belligerent drunk who berated me during a showing of Blade Runner 2049, the ending of which I still have not seen. Suffice to say, I much prefer empty theaters.
It ended up being not quite empty, but there were only three other people, and none in my row, so it was fine, save that I had to struggle mightily not to break down sobbing a few times.
When I bought the ticket, it was still several hours before show time, and I ended up spending a lot of time anticipating it. That's not usual for me. I try to avoid hype, because more often than not it's the hype that ends up leaving you disappointed more than the quality of the thing you're hyped about. A game can be good, but you might be disappointed that it wasn't exactly the thing you were hyping yourself up for, and then that makes you think the game is bad when it's not.
I have a lot of thoughts about hype, but I don't know that I was really hyping up the movie so much as preparing for it.
The last couple of years in my head have been about validation. Recognizing the importance of it. Cataloging and identifying the harm of invalidation. Fred Rogers' work was all about validation. More than that, it was about unconditional validation of the worth of everyone, and especially children.
I don't really want to recap the whole film with this post, as you should go see it yourself, but the beginning of the documentary is important because it changed my perception of Mr. Rogers' role in American television history.
The movie begins with the story of Fred Rogers going to seminary school and preparing to become a Presbyterian minister. He returned home for vacation during his senior year, and that's when he became acquainted with television. And he saw fairly quickly what television was all about: slapstick comedy and commercialism.
The film uses a lot of footage from old interviews with him, and there's one from very early in his career where he's talking about what he wants to do in terms of communicating with children, and he talks about how television was this tool that could be capable of so much good being used for what he saw as cruel, unfunny jokes and selling products.
Of particular concern was the message this was sending to children. He said that TV wasn't valuing who the children were, but what they would become: great consumers. From the very early days of television, the message was clear that your worth was not inherent, but was dependent on your ability to consume products.
Think about that. Think about the modern world. Think how often it is implied that you're not really special unless you can afford a certain object. You're not a success unless you can afford this car, or that phone. You're not important unless you have this many likes or that many subscribers.
At least in America, the modern world is built upon tying your worth as a person to your means of making money with which to buy shit. Your time spent in school isn't about learning life skills or growing as a person, but about pressure to meet arbitrary measures of success and intelligence. It's not about who you are or what you might be, but about whether you can get good enough grades to get a good job, not so you can be happy, but so you can buy shit.
That is a supremely invalidating message to send to children, and it answers so many questions about why things are the way they are, and that's what inspired Fred Rogers to make a show dedicated to saying the exact opposite: that you are worthy of love just as you are. That you have inherent value as a person. That there is nobody else on this Earth like you, and that you are special.
This is the very thing that I'm struggling with at the moment. Mr. Rogers tried, but his message didn't stick with me at the time. The voices telling my that I was worthless were much louder than his soft-spoken parables. And yet, maybe it did stick, because I am fighting like hell to tell myself that I'm worthwhile, and that I'm worthy of being loved, particular by myself.
You are, sweetheart.
I spent the day in an odd fashion. After buying that ticket, I played some games, but then I did a thing I've been struggling to do for months and went outside. I went for a walk. I enjoyed the cool, partly cloudy weather. I thought about Fred Rogers, and how much I wanted to be like him.
I don't mean the fame, or the beloved status. I mean the other thing, the whole 'loving and validating people's worth unconditionally' thing. I want my stories to carry a similar message, and I want it to be just as earnest without being overbearing. In my heart, I know this is who I am. It's just not what I present.
That's a rare thing, love. It's a hard thing. That you've had this life, and still feel this thing, is wonderful, but don't make it another condition. Understand?
The film was one of powerful moments. There were the times Mr. Rogers covered dark days, and there were the times where he tackled issues of injustice. To me, though, the most powerful parts of the film were the ones dealing with Fred Rogers' doubts. He wondered if what he was doing really mattered. As he laid dying, he wondered to his wife whether he was a good person in the end.
One of the things that struck me most about the film was how strongly I could relate to his story. I wasn't a rich kid. I never went to seminary school, nor do I believe the things he believed about god and the universe.
But when he was a kid, he was sick a lot, and the result was that he spent a lot of time alone in bed. His imagination was often the only thing he had to occupy himself with. Loneliness was a big part of my childhood. When your parents are dealing with their own shit, you're left on your own to deal with yours.
He also wasn't ever allowed to express anger as a child, and that's something I can identify with as well. Most of the time it felt like I wasn't allowed to express anything for fear of getting beat. All that left me was my imagination, my fantasies. Like Fred Rogers, I built a world inside my head where I would try to sort things out with middling success. It laid the groundwork, though, for whatever ability I have to fantasize and create stories.
Even so, having had so little validation growing up, I find myself filled with doubts. I doubt my storytelling abilities, even though I've never really received any negative feedback for it. I doubt whether I'm a good person, despite the fact that I routinely go out of my way to help others. I doubt my worth because, by society's measure, I am a failure. I cannot consume in great volume. I cannot contribute to production. And I know that so many people feel the same way.
I know this is starting to ramble a bit, but I'm just gonna go where it takes me.
You're fine.
There is some part of me that knows I am good. There is some part of me that loves me, or I wouldn't be here any more. It knows that I must love me not for what I could be, but for what I am, and the struggle is because that idea is so alien to me. My father instilled in me the idea that I was only worthwhile when I wasn't in the way, and my mother demonstrated that self-worth was selfish, and society tells me that I am only worth what I can afford.
How am I supposed to create internal validation from nothing? How am I supposed to love myself when I have no idea what that looks like?
You have had so many chances to lose your heart. Do you remember that? So many opportunities to cut yourself off from the world completely. So many moments, both big and small, when heartlessness beckoned you to do horrible things. To be cruel. To inflict your pain on others.
And yet, here you are, still fighting the good fight. So what if it's not an external fight? So what if you're not changing the world through will alone? The fight was always inside of you, as it is with all of us, and it's there that your most important success occurs.
Your father had those chances, too, and the difference between you and him is that he took them. He didn't try to be better. He did transfer his pain to others, including you.
The things you have done to try and be a good person is at the very least uncommon, and probably extraordinary. I know you're afraid to accept that because you think that means you're arrogant, but remember that the voice that tells you that has a vested interest in keeping you where you are, in keeping you passive.
Tell yourself the things you know to be true. Tell yourself that you're beautiful. Tell yourself that you're strong, so very strong. Tell yourself that you are worthy of being loved for who you are, not for what you might become.
If I can imagine whole worlds and epic struggles, I can imagine a reason to love myself, even if it's only because everybody deserves love.
See, Fred Rogers knew the truth of us. Love is the root of everything. Love, or the lack of it. I mean, think about these assholes who think that having white skin makes you superior. Do you think they got much validation in their childhoods?
Do you think Donald Trump got much validation from his slumlord father? Do you think he was ever told that he was good enough just as he was? Or is it more likely that he was told he was only ever worth as much as his bank account?
That's not an excuse, mind you, but it's an explanation, and it's the thing we need to fix if we're to truly change this place. It starts with validating each other and our experiences, with understanding that everyone, everyone has inherent value as a person.
And that includes me.
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