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Speaker 1: based on traditional homeopathropraptic is not accept The medical evidence
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Speaker 1: What we value most, what it cost war Hi. Before
Speaker 1: we get started, I wanted to give you a heads
Speaker 1: up that this episode contains brief mentions of trauma, abuse,
Speaker 1: and suicide. I want to ask you if Fred Rogers
Speaker 1: were here today and you could sit down with him,
Speaker 1: and he sat across from you and said, Hi, actually,
Speaker 1: it's nice to meet you. I'm Fred. I want to
Speaker 1: know what you would ask him. I mean, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be one question. I would want to sit and listen
Speaker 1: to Fred Rogers talk about the people who he's loved
Speaker 1: in his life. I think there's so much to learn
Speaker 1: from listening to people talk about the people who make
Speaker 1: them feel a certain way. This is Ashley c Ford
Speaker 1: in our first episode. I talked to her about a
Speaker 1: very bad day, a bathtub and rediscovering Mr Rogers as
Speaker 1: an adult. I would love, love, love for him to
Speaker 1: talk to me about his love of his wife, his
Speaker 1: love of close friends, of pen pals, how he appreciated
Speaker 1: the parts of them that you know, it's not just
Speaker 1: set them apart, but gave them joy. I feel like
Speaker 1: Mr Rogers never really needed anybody to to be different.
Speaker 1: In an interesting way, he understood that we are fascinating
Speaker 1: creatures all our own and there are people who when
Speaker 1: they speak of passion, when they speak of themselves at
Speaker 1: their best, you learn so much about what happiness can
Speaker 1: create in a person. It's so beautiful and it's so wonderful.
Speaker 1: And I think that very few people appreciated and respected
Speaker 1: the concept of love like Fred Rogers. There's so many
Speaker 1: things to know and to wonder about in this world,
Speaker 1: and there's so many people who want to show and
Speaker 1: tell you all they can, people who want to help
Speaker 1: you to learn and to be brave and strong and
Speaker 1: interesting and loving. That's the best part of living, loving,
Speaker 1: and I love being with you. I'm Carvil Wallace and
Speaker 1: this is Finding Fred, a podcast about Fred Rogers from
Speaker 1: Fatherly and I Heart Media in partnership with Transmitter Media.
Speaker 1: We spoke to Ashley Seaford in our first episode because
Speaker 1: she reminded us that as adults, it's possible to return
Speaker 1: to Mr Rogers and feel affirmed and accepted. But then
Speaker 1: she also took time to consider what Fred might have
Speaker 1: been asking of her as a small child, and might
Speaker 1: still be asking of her now. I've been following her example,
Speaker 1: wrestling with what grown up things there are to learn
Speaker 1: from this children's entertainer for a long time, I've been
Speaker 1: trying to talk about feelings in a serious way, and
Speaker 1: I think at times I've been dismissed because of that,
Speaker 1: and definitely a thought of as soft or lacking and intelligence.
Speaker 1: And I think that what Mr Rogers in the Cultural
Speaker 1: Conversation is doing right now is offering a lot of
Speaker 1: people a chance to reparent themselves in one way or
Speaker 1: another by listening and realizing that while their feelings aren't facts,
Speaker 1: their feelings are powerful, and feelings change things whether or
Speaker 1: not we want them to. And we're not going to
Speaker 1: solve anything, change anything, um progress on some of the
Speaker 1: issues we want to progress on if we continue to
Speaker 1: act as if emotions and feelings are not having real
Speaker 1: consequences in our society and in our culture and in
Speaker 1: our everyday lives. We define love differently all across this country.
Speaker 1: Like for me, love includes accountability. There's no such thing
Speaker 1: as love without accountability. And some people think of love
Speaker 1: as active and some people think of love as a
Speaker 1: nothing emotion. Like what what could love possibly add to
Speaker 1: this conversation? What could love possibly help in these trying times?
Speaker 1: We aren't talking about what love means, and we are
Speaker 1: acting like figuring that out isn't a worthy conversation, and
Speaker 1: we're going to pay for it, And so the idea
Speaker 1: that love would be useless. Right now, I'm like, oh no, oh, no,
Speaker 1: Love changes everything. For a long time, I thought love
Speaker 1: was just a stronger version of like. But Fred said
Speaker 1: love is an active noun, like the words struggle. To
Speaker 1: love someone, he says, is to strive to accept that
Speaker 1: person exactly the way he or she is to accept
Speaker 1: ourselves as we are right here and now. That has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with liking people. It's about something else,
Speaker 1: something requiring time and patience and quiet, things that may
Speaker 1: seem hard to come by today. Time and patience and
Speaker 1: quiet seem especially lacking in the place where many of
Speaker 1: us do most of our noisemaking. Online. The Internet is
Speaker 1: a kind of manic modern neighborhood where outrage changes to
Speaker 1: laughter changes to vanity, all in a few seconds and
Speaker 1: seemingly out of our own control. That's when I start
Speaker 1: feeling like a video game and somebody else has the joystick,
Speaker 1: and in that case, all the people on my timeline
Speaker 1: have the joystick, and I'm let them move me in
Speaker 1: different directions, and I've lost the plot. I've lost control,
Speaker 1: and I don't like to feel that way. I was
Speaker 1: talking to my therapists in the early stages of making
Speaker 1: this show and thinking out loud about what makes Fred
Speaker 1: Rogers interesting and important today, and she stopped me and
Speaker 1: she said, the thing I've always thought about him is
Speaker 1: that he leads with self. This, of course, made no
Speaker 1: sense to me. So she broke out the markers in
Speaker 1: the paper and she drew a big circle, and on
Speaker 1: the outside of the circle, she labeled all of these selves,
Speaker 1: these roles that we take on when we interact with
Speaker 1: the world. The protect herself who makes sure that nobody
Speaker 1: is hurting me or my family, the self that needs
Speaker 1: to prove its worth, the fearful self, the prideful self,
Speaker 1: the needy self. She wrote all these selves around the circle,
Speaker 1: and I pointed to the empty center of it, and
Speaker 1: I said, so, then, what's that? And she said, that
Speaker 1: is what we are. That isn't anger or fear or
Speaker 1: shame or worthlessness or a loneness. That is the true self.
Speaker 1: And when I watched Mr Rogers, it's clear that this
Speaker 1: person has done the work necessary to lead primarily with
Speaker 1: that self. The other parts are there, but there in
Speaker 1: the back seat. He can be in dialogue with them,
Speaker 1: but they don't run the show, or, as Ashley would say,
Speaker 1: it's the true self that has the joystick. I recently
Speaker 1: went and saw Celene Dion perform UH in concert and
Speaker 1: one of the first songs she sings is the Power
Speaker 1: of Love. Now, I remember when it came out. I
Speaker 1: used to go all night skating with my cousins and
Speaker 1: my brother at roller Down South in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Speaker 1: And when I was kid at all night skate rolling
Speaker 1: around the skating rink, and the Power of Love would
Speaker 1: come on right to skate two, and I would just
Speaker 1: throw my hands back behind me and skate as quickly
Speaker 1: as I could. And there's that part that she gets to,
Speaker 1: you know that cauzagnya led and I when she would
Speaker 1: get to that part, that's when I would stop skating
Speaker 1: and I would just let the momentum of my body
Speaker 1: push me forward with my arms back and my eyes closed,
Speaker 1: singing at the top of my lungs. And the DJ
Speaker 1: would get on the microphone and would say, Ashley Ford,
Speaker 1: once again, this is a couple's skate and I could
Speaker 1: not care. I was going to skate to that song.
Speaker 1: I feel like the person I was in that moment
Speaker 1: was and is my core self. I feel like there
Speaker 1: was this deep understanding of myself in that time of
Speaker 1: what I wanted, what I valued, how to just feel
Speaker 1: my body and enjoy it for what it was doing,
Speaker 1: for the movement, for the fun, how to like dream
Speaker 1: about big love and what love could be like, and
Speaker 1: be surrounded by people and still feel like I was
Speaker 1: my own and I couldn't care what they thought about me.
Speaker 1: I couldn't care if I was going to be in trouble.
Speaker 1: All I could think was who I am right now
Speaker 1: is like good, Like this is good. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: good because I was doing anything for anybody else, And
Speaker 1: it wasn't good because I was trying to be anything else.
Speaker 1: It's about a way of and putting myself at the center,
Speaker 1: not because everybody else should put me at the center,
Speaker 1: but just because I am worthy of being at the
Speaker 1: center of myself. I'm glad I'm the way I am.
Speaker 1: I think I'm fine. I'm glad I'm the way I am.
Speaker 1: The pleasure's mine. It's good that I look the way
Speaker 1: I should. Wouldn't change now if I could, because I'm
Speaker 1: happy to be me. Aren't there times that you feel
Speaker 1: that way? But you're just glad you're the way you
Speaker 1: are good for you if you know those times, Yes, sir,
Speaker 1: I'm proud of it when you can feel that way.
Speaker 1: Hope for ourselves and hope for our relationships our communities
Speaker 1: depends on our ability to find our center, to stay
Speaker 1: in touch with it, and to act from it. Fred
Speaker 1: Rogers spent his life creating television for children that was
Speaker 1: shaped in part by this new understanding of what we
Speaker 1: need in order to flourish. Mr rogers Neighborhood was less
Speaker 1: about learning a B c S and more about sorting
Speaker 1: through and managing the enormous feelings that move through you
Speaker 1: as you grow. And Ashley says he did that by
Speaker 1: making time and space for the little feelings, just listening
Speaker 1: to them, and that is something a lot of us
Speaker 1: have forgotten. The problem is is that we think the
Speaker 1: extreme feelings are the only feelings that should motivate action.
Speaker 1: And I think that we have to stop relying on
Speaker 1: the idea that certain feelings will compel us to act
Speaker 1: a certain way, and instead notice our feelings, no matter
Speaker 1: how mild they are, and choose to do something with
Speaker 1: them and I think, unfortunately what we've done is encouraged
Speaker 1: a real lack of imagination for what can be done
Speaker 1: when you feel something that is not as strong. I
Speaker 1: think it's a lack of imagination. The first time we talked,
Speaker 1: one of the questions that people seem to really respond
Speaker 1: to is and want to ask you, what do you
Speaker 1: do with the mad that you feel? And in this conversation,
Speaker 1: we've talked less about mad and more about love, And
Speaker 1: so I'm going to ask you what some may think
Speaker 1: is the inverse of that question, though I don't know
Speaker 1: that it is, what do you do with the love
Speaker 1: that you feel? Keep what I need and I spend
Speaker 1: the rest, and there's always more. It's it's abundant. I
Speaker 1: I'd like to honor people and love people with my
Speaker 1: presence and with being president with them, because not enough
Speaker 1: of us get that, and I'm good at that, And
Speaker 1: if that's the gift I got to give, then that's
Speaker 1: what y'all gonna get. Hi. My name is Lisa, and
Speaker 1: I've never all this for a show before, but I
Speaker 1: was fired by you guys. We asked you, you who've
Speaker 1: been listening to share stories about people who showed you
Speaker 1: how to be helpers. But that's really a question about
Speaker 1: love too. Hi, mom, that we each walk around with
Speaker 1: okay of flowers and walk down the street. If somebody
Speaker 1: says hi to you with files and there, give you
Speaker 1: a flower, and then you have a choice. You can
Speaker 1: smile back and say hi, give them a flower back,
Speaker 1: or you can just pick the flower of them. And
Speaker 1: so the trick is to keep your okay healthy. And
Speaker 1: so if you're always giving away your flowers and not
Speaker 1: accepting other people's flowers and return, you're going to run
Speaker 1: out of flowers. Whereas if you're always accepting other people's
Speaker 1: flowers but you're not keeping out yours, and you're gonna
Speaker 1: find them with a little huge out of sorts, okay.
Speaker 1: So the trick is, you know, to find that balance.
Speaker 1: More stories from you after a quick break. Teething can
Speaker 1: be a real nightmare for your little ones. So are
Speaker 1: you looking for the best relief to soothe teething pain?
Speaker 1: Highlands Naturals Baby oral pain relief can help us the pain.
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Speaker 1: soothe your baby's mouth and gums. No chemicals, no funny business.
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Speaker 1: l A n d s dot com. Slash kind claims
Speaker 1: based on traditional homeopath a prapice, not accept the medical evidence.
Speaker 1: Not ft evaluated. What spring like in Winter's favorite town?
Speaker 1: Park City, Utah? Imagine waking up on a blue bird
Speaker 1: day to ski the greatest snow on Earth. Having three resorts,
Speaker 1: Park City, Mountain, Deer Valley in Woodwork, Park City in
Speaker 1: your backyard, exploring miles of wide open spaces by snowshoe
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Speaker 1: spring in winter's favorite town. Learn to visit safely at
Speaker 1: visit park City dot com. Hi, I'm Ebony Money and
Speaker 1: I'm Ricked Schwartz and we're here from the San Diego
Speaker 1: Zoo Wildlife Alliance, the global conservation organization behind the world
Speaker 1: famous San Diego Zoo and Safari Park, and together we're
Speaker 1: excited to announce Amazing Wildlife, a new show from my
Speaker 1: Heart Radio that will connect you more deeply to wildlife.
Speaker 1: Our work at the San Diego Zoo and our conservation
Speaker 1: efforts around the globe. As the ambassador of our alliance,
Speaker 1: I'm excited to share our stories of the thousands of
Speaker 1: plants and animals in our parks and conservation hubs worldwide.
Speaker 1: Our work spans six continents, so don't forget your passport.
Speaker 1: And as a senior editor, I'll be bringing you stories
Speaker 1: from wildlife care specialists, veterinarians, and researchers. Together, we'll learn
Speaker 1: more about the wildlife you love and discover plants and
Speaker 1: animals you've never heard of before. We hope you gain
Speaker 1: a new appreciation of plants and animals through our conversations
Speaker 1: as we explore the connection between humans, wildlife, and the environment.
Speaker 1: Listen to Amazing Wildlife on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Ashley says
Speaker 1: she takes the love she needs and gives the rest away.
Speaker 1: That feels most natural when we're giving it away to
Speaker 1: our family or our friends. But when we give it
Speaker 1: away to stray rangers. We're not doing it because we
Speaker 1: think we might get something back. We may never even
Speaker 1: see them again. We're doing it because we want to
Speaker 1: be good neighbors. Hi Carvel, my name is Benny Delgado?
Speaker 1: What a profound question. Who taught me what it means
Speaker 1: to be a helper? And you know, I distinctly remember
Speaker 1: my mother. We were driving down the road. It was snowing.
Speaker 1: It was really cold that day, and we're coming down
Speaker 1: a busy street and there was a mother and her
Speaker 1: children that were walking against the wind with the snow
Speaker 1: hitting them and carrying bags with groceries and uh And
Speaker 1: immediately she pulled over, rolled down the window and offered
Speaker 1: to give these people a ride. And immediately she asked
Speaker 1: us to move over. There was several kids and the
Speaker 1: mother and mother got the front season we all squished
Speaker 1: into the back. She got out, help get the groceries
Speaker 1: in to the trunk of the car and took them
Speaker 1: to wherever they were going, way past our house. And
Speaker 1: you know that that memory is ingrained in my mind. Hello,
Speaker 1: my name is Justin sweeton Um from Texas and two
Speaker 1: thousand and sixteen, I was homeless and on drugs and
Speaker 1: he needed to make a change in my life. So
Speaker 1: I had walked to uh Conro, Texas, met a man
Speaker 1: there by the name of Luke Readis. He invited me
Speaker 1: into the men's Transitional home called the Freedom House. He
Speaker 1: basically just instructed me on good ethics through the lens
Speaker 1: of Christianity. A few months into the program, the guy
Speaker 1: who was running the Corner House of Prayer he was
Speaker 1: stepping down after seven years. I just felt the urge
Speaker 1: that I wanted to step into that position, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to be a part of this, this community to
Speaker 1: help homeless people get back on their feet. And Luke
Speaker 1: was absolutely on board with it. He gave me a
Speaker 1: key to the church. He gave me basically all authority
Speaker 1: over the place. You know, somebody who had only been
Speaker 1: sober for a few months. And for the next two
Speaker 1: years I impacted people's lives like I wouldn't believe. You know,
Speaker 1: I went from someone who was in search of health
Speaker 1: to suddenly giving help. It was the most important two
Speaker 1: years of my life. Hi grovel Um. When I was
Speaker 1: in the third grade, I was a painfully awkward kid
Speaker 1: and had glasses and I had a big backpack, and
Speaker 1: I got picked on a lot by this one girl
Speaker 1: in particular. I was just I was so afraid of her.
Speaker 1: And I had this teacher, Mr. Lebron, who paired us together.
Speaker 1: So we had a writing assignment and he said, she
Speaker 1: needs some help, and I think you would be really
Speaker 1: good at helping her with this writing assignment, and you
Speaker 1: need some help with your presentation because you're not good
Speaker 1: at speaking up. And she's really brave and really strong,
Speaker 1: and it it changed my whole life. I became friends
Speaker 1: with this girl. We realized that we needed each other.
Speaker 1: She taught me how to speak up for myself and
Speaker 1: how to not take bullying from other people. And it
Speaker 1: helps me relate to people that I wouldn't otherwise relate to.
Speaker 1: And I just Mr Brown, if you're out there, I
Speaker 1: think value all the time and thank you so much.
Speaker 1: When I was in my twenties, I went through a
Speaker 1: crip ling depression. It was as if all the unprocessed
Speaker 1: trauma from my childhood just showed up on my door
Speaker 1: one day and moved into my apartment. I began to
Speaker 1: feel like it would maybe be better if I didn't
Speaker 1: bother being alive at all. I didn't think I had
Speaker 1: a lot of value to the world. I didn't think
Speaker 1: that I was equipped to deal with life. My closest
Speaker 1: friend at the time saw my struggle and gifted me
Speaker 1: a pass to this African American meditation retreat in northern California.
Speaker 1: It seemed random at the time, but I had nothing
Speaker 1: else to lose. On the way up, I volunteered to
Speaker 1: pick up one of the meditation teachers who was flying
Speaker 1: in from New York. I had always been told that
Speaker 1: when in pain, just find one simple act of service
Speaker 1: that you can manage and do it. The teacher I
Speaker 1: picked up that day was the Reverend Angel Kyoto Williams.
Speaker 1: She was the first real and Buddhist I ever met,
Speaker 1: and she was nothing like the movies told me and
Speaker 1: ordained zen practitioner would be. She was black and queer
Speaker 1: and had the no nonsense demeanor of a born and
Speaker 1: raised New Yorker. And when I attended her Dharma talks,
Speaker 1: I was mesmerized. Here she was talking about a liberation
Speaker 1: beyond liberation. She talked about love as a form of practice,
Speaker 1: resistance to oppression as a spiritual calling. She talked about
Speaker 1: meditation and quiet as a path towards the full realization
Speaker 1: of the self. I didn't understand all of it, but
Speaker 1: I trusted it. Something about a woman who grew up
Speaker 1: in Queens teaching me love and understanding just hit me.
Speaker 1: We became friends and over the years. I sometimes have
Speaker 1: practiced with her often and sometimes not so often. But
Speaker 1: the way she has looked at me and seen me
Speaker 1: and loved me, it did for me what Fred Rogers
Speaker 1: did for me. It gave me this very quiet, very
Speaker 1: subtle sense that I have value, that I matter just
Speaker 1: as I am. In some way, Angel might have saved
Speaker 1: my life. She's written some books, including Being Black Has
Speaker 1: Then In the Art of Fearlessness and Grace and Radical Dharma,
Speaker 1: Talking Love, Race and Liberation. She's the founder of the
Speaker 1: Center of Transformative Change in the Spiritual director of the
Speaker 1: meditation based New Dharma Community. As long as I've known her,
Speaker 1: her work has been about freedom, freedom from oppression, freedom
Speaker 1: from anger and hate, freedom from suffering, freedom for all
Speaker 1: of us. I could not talk about the work that
Speaker 1: Fred Rogers did without talking to the person I know
Speaker 1: who most directly aligns with Fred's philosophy, even though she
Speaker 1: came from a very different place than Fred did. Angel
Speaker 1: was a young activist in New York City. She knows confrontation,
Speaker 1: so I asked her how she managed to overcome the
Speaker 1: fear and anger that can come with that. She told
Speaker 1: me a story about what it was like to return
Speaker 1: to New York after years of practice in California. I
Speaker 1: got off at Penn Station, as one as one does,
Speaker 1: and I left the relative space of being on the
Speaker 1: train and I entered into the sea of people that
Speaker 1: is the life of New York. And in that moment,
Speaker 1: like I felt this release of like, oh so good.
Speaker 1: And it became super clear to me in that moment
Speaker 1: that what happens in that space of confrontation is you
Speaker 1: can see it as confrontation with all of these other people,
Speaker 1: but if you're open to it, you recognize that it's
Speaker 1: actually what it is as a confrontation or a meeting
Speaker 1: with yourself. M And when it's a meeting with yourself,
Speaker 1: then all of it is profound. Every single person, every
Speaker 1: single person is a meeting with yourself like velcro. Right,
Speaker 1: it's like if there's nothing to rub, it just all
Speaker 1: like smooths by. But if you've got a little like
Speaker 1: stickiness there, it's like a little you know, then people's
Speaker 1: hooks get on that your that those fuzzy like gnarly
Speaker 1: places in you, and so then it's an opportunity instead
Speaker 1: of you know, you're in my way, you get the
Speaker 1: hell out of Right, it wasn't that it was. It
Speaker 1: was this like oh yeah, oh there, I am. Oh right,
Speaker 1: it's like and and that that was very very clear.
Speaker 1: Remember once described sitting meditation as a kind of curiosity,
Speaker 1: and that really struck me. I remember right after you
Speaker 1: found a profound curiosity. I remember sitting after that at
Speaker 1: this retreat with that in my head, and it was
Speaker 1: kind of hot and there was a like a beat
Speaker 1: of sweat was just down my face, and I was
Speaker 1: really annoyed by it. And it was this embodiment of
Speaker 1: something that I felt like, I think I know what
Speaker 1: she's talking about, what it means to just sit and
Speaker 1: be curious as opposed to constantly trying to manage and control.
Speaker 1: But but again I wonder, I wonder, like, okay, so
Speaker 1: I just I say people to people in the podcast,
Speaker 1: all right, everyone being curious, domainage and control, thank you, goodnight?
Speaker 1: And then what keeps people from going off and doing that?
Speaker 1: In other words, how does one it's one thing to
Speaker 1: know something and a different thing to live it and
Speaker 1: embody it. How do you cross that gap? I think
Speaker 1: you could. I mean I think that's where practice comes in, right,
Speaker 1: we practice our way into contact with three reality a
Speaker 1: more truer reality until it is familiar enough to us
Speaker 1: that we recognize the other thing is false, so that
Speaker 1: a bead of sweat is just a bead of sweat.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be an annoyance. It could first
Speaker 1: just be a feeling. Angel practices meditation in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Fred helped kids get there by showing them how to
Speaker 1: slow down and get quiet. There were long pauses on
Speaker 1: the show and moments when Fred would ask us to
Speaker 1: stop and reflect on a song or an image or
Speaker 1: just breathe. That kind of slowing down becomes really useful
Speaker 1: when we're hurt or overwhelmed, when someone makes us angry,
Speaker 1: that's when we really need to understand our emotions to
Speaker 1: be able to get space from them. My practice is
Speaker 1: having the space right, carving the space out, and I
Speaker 1: mean just that is a monumental feat in a world
Speaker 1: that is like constantly moving, and it moves maybe I
Speaker 1: would say about three or four times as fast as
Speaker 1: it did when I was younger and entered into this practice.
Speaker 1: Just the mental commitment to carve that kind of space
Speaker 1: out in a society that's so much about doing, to
Speaker 1: say like I'm not gonna actually be doing anything. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to be accomplished anything or producing anything. And
Speaker 1: I think as a as a black person in particular,
Speaker 1: it frees me from the notion that I am defined
Speaker 1: by what I'm producing and for people that were brought
Speaker 1: to this land to to produce and have in so
Speaker 1: many ways organized ourselves and many of the campaigns organized
Speaker 1: for us by our leaders and no shame or blame,
Speaker 1: but have been organized around our our value in relationship
Speaker 1: to producing things. Uh. And I'm fond of saying these days,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm like, get us jobs, Like I mean,
Speaker 1: we have worked all we have need to work for
Speaker 1: the next We don't, you know, we don't need You
Speaker 1: don't need to teach us how to work job skills.
Speaker 1: That's it, Like, that's a that's an oxy moron. Like
Speaker 1: our evidence of our job skills is this country. That's
Speaker 1: they're not ready for this one. They're not ready for
Speaker 1: this conversation. So um. And so what I saw is
Speaker 1: these very particular opportunities to be a fugitive from this construct.
Speaker 1: So I think it's really it's it's really profound that
Speaker 1: just the act of the choosing of the silence, and
Speaker 1: and I get to defy some things, right, And I
Speaker 1: think what we're talking about is defying. Yes, we are
Speaker 1: talking about defying, I mean, and that is the thing.
Speaker 1: I mean. Their defiance is a really great word to
Speaker 1: bring into this conversation because I feel like when I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the power of someone representing love in the
Speaker 1: way that Fred Rogers represented it, and the way that
Speaker 1: that love, the way Fred Rogers said to kids, you
Speaker 1: matter in a way that maybe no one else in
Speaker 1: that kid's life was telling them. It's tempting to think
Speaker 1: of that as a kind of affirmation and a kind
Speaker 1: of and that's what's that's what's made fun of when
Speaker 1: we make fun of Fred Rogers. But the more I
Speaker 1: think about it, the more I think of it as
Speaker 1: an act of denial, an act of resistance, denying this
Speaker 1: what he saw encroaching on kids and what then proceeded
Speaker 1: to over the next because he started so the world
Speaker 1: was similar in some ways but wildly different in other ways,
Speaker 1: and that he wanted to deny this. What he saw
Speaker 1: was this encroaching idea that your value was only based
Speaker 1: on how how much you please people, or how much
Speaker 1: people like you, or how much money you earn, or
Speaker 1: if you could wrap them all up. You can earn
Speaker 1: a lot of money. Then people are pleased and they
Speaker 1: like you maybe get that all together. But really, what
Speaker 1: Fred Rogers was talking about, seen through certain lens, was
Speaker 1: a kind of resistance to the to the momentum of
Speaker 1: our culture. And that's where I think of him as
Speaker 1: like an incredibly strong person. No, I think that his
Speaker 1: his his active resistance was fairly um demonstrated and strong
Speaker 1: and persistent and you know all of the things that
Speaker 1: make a warrior a warrior, right, Like not a war monger,
Speaker 1: not a soldier, right, but a warrior. What is that difference? Um,
Speaker 1: I think of soldiers is following instructions, you know, I
Speaker 1: think as I think of warriors in the heroic sense
Speaker 1: of warrior, as people that are charged right there, charged
Speaker 1: with a cause. I think the power and the potency
Speaker 1: of him, like any true teacher of wisdom, is that
Speaker 1: he he was talking to you at each and every
Speaker 1: single time. And maybe he would turn his attention and
Speaker 1: he would talk to him Mr McFeeley or you know
Speaker 1: whoever else or you know, um, but there were those
Speaker 1: times when he turned directly to the camera and he
Speaker 1: spoke to you. He spoke to me, and so that
Speaker 1: held ness, especially for those of us that were made
Speaker 1: to feel as if the society wasn't constructed for our
Speaker 1: sense of belonging unless we vied for that belonging, unless
Speaker 1: we quote unquote earned that belonging, to have someone turned
Speaker 1: to you directly you and say, just as you are,
Speaker 1: You're loved, just as you are, exactly as you are
Speaker 1: in this moment, not another moment, not a moment to come,
Speaker 1: not a promised moment. Right even even our religions were
Speaker 1: selling us on a promised moment to come one day,
Speaker 1: and he was saying, no, right now, like right this
Speaker 1: particular moment, which I think of, as you know, as
Speaker 1: Howard Thurman would say, is like the religion of Jesus,
Speaker 1: not the religion about Jesus right doing the work of Jesus.
Speaker 1: That was to like hold love right there in the space.
Speaker 1: And you know, when we say this word love, people
Speaker 1: are probably turning to their warm fuzzy feelings and looking
Speaker 1: for that. And I'm not talking about the warm fuzzy feelings.
Speaker 1: And if it generated warm fuzzy feelings for you, great,
Speaker 1: but I think what it generated from me is space, right,
Speaker 1: It's the space it was the space to be me.
Speaker 1: I didn't look at Fred Rogerson go oh, my god,
Speaker 1: warm and fuzzy. I love him, you know. In fact,
Speaker 1: I didn't think much about him, and I think that
Speaker 1: that is the most profound love is. It didn't make
Speaker 1: me think about him and how I felt about him.
Speaker 1: It made me think about how it felt about me.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about you? What is your value?
Speaker 1: How do you even know? Above my desk at home,
Speaker 1: where I write this, I have a small reminder that
Speaker 1: says you are enough. I look at it all the time,
Speaker 1: not because I believe it, but because I actually don't.
Speaker 1: I mean, I am enough for what, for you, for
Speaker 1: the world, for me. In my forty or five years,
Speaker 1: I've had a lot of experiences, but maybe the most
Speaker 1: defining one is the experience being shown in married ways
Speaker 1: that I'm not enough, that my life doesn't matter. Many
Speaker 1: people have had this same experience. My mother and I
Speaker 1: were homeless for a time, often hungry. I was violently
Speaker 1: sexually assaulted at the age of seven, and it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be the last time I was called racial slurs by
Speaker 1: classmates and even occasionally by teachers. I grew up to
Speaker 1: watch people who looked like me, beat and shot on
Speaker 1: television while unarmed, only to have the justice system decide
Speaker 1: time and time and time again that no wrong had
Speaker 1: been committed in the eyes of the law. I've looked
Speaker 1: down the barrel of guns just because people thought my
Speaker 1: mother and I didn't belong in the neighborhood that we
Speaker 1: lived in. Am I enough? Do I have value? Does
Speaker 1: my life really matter? I can tell myself that it does,
Speaker 1: But what does it take for me to believe it?
Speaker 1: Of course, not believing that I am enough? It's not
Speaker 1: just a personal problem. It's a collective one, because how
Speaker 1: can I believe in your value if I don't even
Speaker 1: believe in my own. In this life, people like me
Speaker 1: and maybe like you, we've had to find our own value,
Speaker 1: our own worth. And one voice, like the voice of
Speaker 1: Fred Rogers telling me that I am enough is powerful
Speaker 1: and it is beautiful, and I want to believe it.
Speaker 1: I love believing it. But his voice alone is not
Speaker 1: enough to undo an entire history. I wish it was,
Speaker 1: but it's not. But his exam ample the way he
Speaker 1: lived now that has impact the way Reverend Angel lives,
Speaker 1: That has impact the people in your lives that you've
Speaker 1: called to tell us about that has impact. Fred Rogers
Speaker 1: lived his life in service to something greater than himself.
Speaker 1: Let's call it love, and not warm feelings. I like
Speaker 1: you a lot. Love, but love in the way that
Speaker 1: Ashley defines it as action, as accountability, Love in the
Speaker 1: way that Reverend Angel defines it as space. Space to
Speaker 1: see others, to understand others. This was not his only devotion,
Speaker 1: but it seemed to be his primary devotion, and I
Speaker 1: don't think he could have done this work without it.
Speaker 1: Fred was devoted and disciplined. He swam every morning, He
Speaker 1: rose early, and studied and prayed and meditated on how
Speaker 1: he would be an active force for good every day.
Speaker 1: A producer for his SHOWOW told us that each time
Speaker 1: he entered the TV studio he uttered a small prayer,
Speaker 1: Dear God, let some part of this be yours. He
Speaker 1: famously made sure that every one of the hundreds of
Speaker 1: letters he received each week was thoughtfully answered. His dedication
Speaker 1: was to loving us, accepting us, showing up for us
Speaker 1: every day for nine episodes forty years. Through the television
Speaker 1: neighborhood he created, he showed us how to love like
Speaker 1: that too. That was Fred Rogers way of making the
Speaker 1: world better. So what is yours? There is no one
Speaker 1: sentence I can say, or that Fred Rogers can say
Speaker 1: that solves all of our problems. Our freedom, our love
Speaker 1: for ourselves, our care for one another does not come overnight.
Speaker 1: It is something we build bit by bit, one action
Speaker 1: at a time, maybe even one moment at a time.
Speaker 1: But I do not have doubt. I believe in your
Speaker 1: ability to imagine and live something better than this because
Speaker 1: I am learning to do it myself. I'm proud of you.
Speaker 1: I'm grateful to you, and I love you. Here's the
Speaker 1: sweater going into the closet, Here's the jacket going on.
Speaker 1: Me will be the nighttime, and then I'll come the
Speaker 1: new day, and that's when you and I will be
Speaker 1: together again. Thank you for listening to Finding Fred. Our
Speaker 1: show is produced by Transmitter Media. The team is Dan O'Donnell,
Speaker 1: Jordan Bailey, and Maddie Foley. Our editor is Sarah Nicks.
Speaker 1: The executive producer for Transmitter Media is Greta Cohne. Executive
Speaker 1: producers at Fatherly are Simon Isaacs and Andrew Berman. Thanks
Speaker 1: to the team at I Heart Media. Yeah special thanks
Speaker 1: to all of our guests. Many thanks also to Fred
Speaker 1: Rogers Productions, to Joe Negri and to the studio engineers
Speaker 1: at UC Berkeley. Extra special thanks to Tim lieve Barger,
Speaker 1: who runs the site Neighborhood archive dot com. It's a
Speaker 1: listing of every song, every episode, every character on Mr.
Speaker 1: Rogers Neighborhood. It's been an amazing resource for our team.
Speaker 1: Rick Kwan makes the show sound beautiful. Theme music is
Speaker 1: by Blue Dot Sessions and interstitial music by Alison Layton Brown.
Speaker 1: That's it for our show. You can come back and
Speaker 1: listen to all of our episodes and tell your friends
Speaker 1: to do the same. I'm Carvel Wallace, thank you for listening.
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