Speaker 1: Hi. Before we get started, I wanted to give you
Speaker 1: a heads 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 carved a Wallace
Speaker 1: and this is Finding Fred, a podcast about Fred Rogers
Speaker 1: from 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 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 laughter,
Speaker 1: changes to vanity, all in a few seconds and seemingly
Speaker 1: out of our own control. That's when I start feeling
Speaker 1: 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 letting 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. That 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 nights skating with my cousins and
Speaker 1: my brother at roller Dome South in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Speaker 1: And when I was a kid at all night skate
Speaker 1: rolling around the skating rink, and the Power of Love
Speaker 1: would come on right to skate two, and I would
Speaker 1: just throw my hands back behind me and skate as
Speaker 1: quickly as I could. And there's that part that she
Speaker 1: gets to, you know that, because I'm y'allt and I
Speaker 1: when she would get to that part, that's when I
Speaker 1: would stop skating, and I would just let the momentum
Speaker 1: of my body push me forward with my arms back
Speaker 1: and my eyes closed, singing at the top of my lungs.
Speaker 1: And the DJ would get on the microphone and would say,
Speaker 1: Ashley Ford, once again, this is a couple's skate, and
Speaker 1: I could not care. I was going to skate to
Speaker 1: that song. I feel like the person I was in
Speaker 1: that moment was and is my core self. I feel
Speaker 1: like there was this deep understanding of myself in that
Speaker 1: time of what I wanted, what I valued, how to
Speaker 1: just feel my body and enjoy it for what it
Speaker 1: was doing, for the movement, for the fun, how to
Speaker 1: like dream about big love and what love could be like,
Speaker 1: and be surrounded by people and still feel like I
Speaker 1: was my own and I couldn't care what they thought
Speaker 1: about me. I couldn't care if I was going to
Speaker 1: be in trouble. All I could think was who I
Speaker 1: am right now is like good, Like this is good.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't good because I was doing anything for
Speaker 1: anybody else, And it wasn't good because I was trying
Speaker 1: to be anything else. It's about a way of being
Speaker 1: and putting myself at the center, not because everybody else
Speaker 1: should put me at the center, but just because I
Speaker 1: am worthy of being at the center of myself. I'm
Speaker 1: glad I'm the way I am. I think I'm fine.
Speaker 1: I'm glad I'm the way I am. The pleasure's mine.
Speaker 1: It's good that I look the way I should. Wouldn't
Speaker 1: change now if I could, because I'm happy to be me.
Speaker 1: Aren't there times that you feel that way that you're
Speaker 1: just glad you're the way you are? Good for you
Speaker 1: if you know those times, yes, sir, I'm proud of it.
Speaker 1: When you can feel that way. Ye. Hope for ourselves
Speaker 1: and hope for our relationships our communities depends on our
Speaker 1: ability to find our center, to stay in touch with it,
Speaker 1: and to act from it. Fred Rogers spent his life
Speaker 1: creating television for children that was shaped in part by
Speaker 1: this new understanding of what we need in order to flourish.
Speaker 1: Mr rogers Neighborhood was less about learning a B c
Speaker 1: S and more about sorting through and managing the enormous
Speaker 1: feelings that move through you as you grow and Actuley
Speaker 1: says he did that by making time and space for
Speaker 1: the little feelings, just listening to them, and that is
Speaker 1: something a lot of us have forgotten. The problem is
Speaker 1: is that we think the extreme feelings are the only
Speaker 1: feelings that should motivate action, and I think think that
Speaker 1: we have to stop relying on the idea that certain
Speaker 1: feelings will compel us to act a certain way, and
Speaker 1: instead notice our feelings, no matter how mild they are,
Speaker 1: and choose to do something with them. And I think,
Speaker 1: unfortunately what we've done is encouraged a real lack of
Speaker 1: imagination for what can be done when you feel something
Speaker 1: that is not as strong. I think it's a lack
Speaker 1: of imagination. The first time we talked, one of the
Speaker 1: questions that people seem to really respond to is and
Speaker 1: want to ask you what do you do with the
Speaker 1: mad that you feel? And in this conversation, we've talked
Speaker 1: less about mad and more about love, And so I'm
Speaker 1: going to ask you what some may think is the
Speaker 1: inverse of that question, though I don't know that it is,
Speaker 1: what do you do with the love that you feel?
Speaker 1: I keep what I need and I spend the rest,
Speaker 1: and there's always more. It's it's abundant. I I'd like
Speaker 1: to honor people and love people with my presence and
Speaker 1: with being president with them, because not enough of us
Speaker 1: get that, and I'm good at that. And if that's
Speaker 1: the gift I got to give, then that's what y'all
Speaker 1: gonna get. Hi. My name is Risa and I've never
Speaker 1: called it for a show before, but I was fired
Speaker 1: by you guys. We asked you you who've been listening
Speaker 1: to share stories about people who showed you how to
Speaker 1: be helpers. But that's really a question about love too. Hi,
Speaker 1: mom saw that we each walk around with a bokay
Speaker 1: of flowers and walk down the street. If somebody says
Speaker 1: hied you with smiles and there giving you a flower,
Speaker 1: and you have a choice. You can smile back and
Speaker 1: say hi, give them a flower back, or you going
Speaker 1: to take their flower of human And so the trick
Speaker 1: is to keep your okay healthy. And so if you're
Speaker 1: always giving away your flowers and not accepting other people's
Speaker 1: flowers and return, you're going to run out of flowers.
Speaker 1: Whereas if you're always accepting other people's flowers but you're
Speaker 1: not getting out yours, and you're gonna find them with
Speaker 1: a little huge out of sorts. Okay, So to tricking,
Speaker 1: you know, to find that balance. More stories from you
Speaker 1: After a quick break, h Ashley says she takes the
Speaker 1: love she needs and gives the rest away. That feels
Speaker 1: most natural when we're giving it away to our family
Speaker 1: or our friends. But when we give it away to strangers,
Speaker 1: we're not doing it because we think we might get
Speaker 1: something back. We may never even see them again. We're
Speaker 1: doing it because we to be good neighbors, high carvel.
Speaker 1: My name is Benny Delgado. What a profound question. Who
Speaker 1: taught me what it means to be a helper? And
Speaker 1: you know, I distinctly remember my mother. We were driving
Speaker 1: down the road. It was snowing. It was really cold
Speaker 1: that day, and we're coming down a busy street and
Speaker 1: there was a mother and her children that were walking
Speaker 1: against the wind with the snow hitting them and carrying
Speaker 1: bags of groceries and uh and immediately she pulled over,
Speaker 1: rolled down the window and offered to give these people
Speaker 1: a ride. And immediately she asked us to move over.
Speaker 1: There was several kids and the mother. Mother got in
Speaker 1: the front seat and we all squished into the back.
Speaker 1: She got out, help get the groceries and its the
Speaker 1: trunk of a car and took them to wherever they
Speaker 1: were going, way past our house. And you know that
Speaker 1: that memory is ingrained in my mind. Hello, my name
Speaker 1: is Justin sweeton Um from Texas and two thousand and sixteen,
Speaker 1: I was homeless and on drugs and needed to make
Speaker 1: a change in my life. So I walked to uh Conro, Texas,
Speaker 1: met a man there by the name of Luke Reatas.
Speaker 1: He invited me into the men's transitional home called the
Speaker 1: Freedom House. He basically just instructed me on good ethics
Speaker 1: through the lens of Christianity. A few months into the program,
Speaker 1: the guy who was running the Corner House of Prayer,
Speaker 1: he was stepping down after seven years. I just felt
Speaker 1: the urge and I wanted to step into that position,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to be a part of this, this
Speaker 1: community to help homeless people get back on their feet.
Speaker 1: And uh Luke was absolutely on board with it. He
Speaker 1: gave me a key to the church. He gave me
Speaker 1: basically all authority over the place. You know, somebody who
Speaker 1: had only been sober for a few months. And for
Speaker 1: the next two years I impacted people's lives like I
Speaker 1: wouldn't believe, you know. I went from someone who was
Speaker 1: in search of help to suddenly giving help. It was
Speaker 1: the most important two years of my life. Ki grovel Um.
Speaker 1: When I was in the third grade, I was a
Speaker 1: painfully awkward kid and had glasses and I had a
Speaker 1: big backpack, and I got picked on a lot by
Speaker 1: this one girl in particular. I was just I was
Speaker 1: so afraid of her. And I had this teacher, Mr. Lebron,
Speaker 1: who paired us together. We had a writing assignment and
Speaker 1: he said, she needs some help, and I think you
Speaker 1: would be really good at helping her with this writing assignment,
Speaker 1: and you need some help with your presentation because you're
Speaker 1: not good at speaking up. And she's really brave and
Speaker 1: really strong, and it it changed my whole life. I
Speaker 1: became friends with this girl. We realized that we needed
Speaker 1: each other. She taught me how to speak up for
Speaker 1: myself and how to not take bullying from other people.
Speaker 1: And it helps me relate to people that I wouldn't
Speaker 1: otherwise relate to. And I just mister Brown, if you're
Speaker 1: out there, I think value all the time, and thank
Speaker 1: you so much. When I was in my twenties, I
Speaker 1: went through a crippling depression. It was as if all
Speaker 1: the unprocessed trauma from my childhood just showed up on
Speaker 1: my door one day and moved in my apartment. I
Speaker 1: began to feel like it would maybe be better if
Speaker 1: I didn't bother being alive at all. I didn't think
Speaker 1: I had a lot of value to the world. I
Speaker 1: didn't think that I was equipped to deal with life.
Speaker 1: My closest friend at the time, I saw my struggle
Speaker 1: and gifted me a pass to this African American meditation
Speaker 1: retreat in northern California. It seemed random at the time,
Speaker 1: but I had nothing else to lose. On the way up,
Speaker 1: I volunteered to pick up one of the meditation teachers
Speaker 1: who was flying in from New York. I had always
Speaker 1: been told that when in pain, just find one simple
Speaker 1: act of service that you can manage and do it.
Speaker 1: The teacher I picked up that day was the Reverend
Speaker 1: Angel Kyoto Williams. She was the first real Zen Buddhist
Speaker 1: I ever met, and she was nothing like the movies
Speaker 1: told me and ordained Zen practitioner would be. She was
Speaker 1: black and queer and have the no non since demeanor
Speaker 1: of a born and raised New Yorker. And when I
Speaker 1: attended her Dharma talks, I was mesmerized. Here she was
Speaker 1: talking about a liberation beyond liberation. She talked about love
Speaker 1: as a form of practice, resistance to oppression as a
Speaker 1: spiritual calling. She talked about meditation and quiet as a
Speaker 1: path toward the full realization of the self. I didn't
Speaker 1: understand all of it, but I trusted it. Something about
Speaker 1: a woman who grew up in Queens teaching me love
Speaker 1: and understanding just hit me. We became friends, and over
Speaker 1: the years I sometimes have practiced with her often and
Speaker 1: sometimes not so often. But the way she has looked
Speaker 1: at me and seen me and loved me, it did
Speaker 1: for me what Fred Rogers did for me. It gave
Speaker 1: me this very quiet, very subtle sense that I have value,
Speaker 1: that I matter just as I am. In some way,
Speaker 1: Angel might have saved my life. She's written some books,
Speaker 1: including Being Black and Then In the Art of Fearlessness
Speaker 1: and Grace and Radical Dharma, Talking Love, Race and Liberation.
Speaker 1: She's the founder of the Center of Transformative Change in
Speaker 1: the Spiritual director of the meditation based New Dharma Community.
Speaker 1: As long as I've known her, her work has been
Speaker 1: about freedom, freedom from oppression, freedom from anger and hate,
Speaker 1: freedom from suffering, freedom for all of us. I could
Speaker 1: not talk about the work that Fred Rogers did without
Speaker 1: talking to the person I know who most directly aligns
Speaker 1: with Fred's philosophy, even though she came from a very
Speaker 1: different place than Fred did. Angel was a young activist
Speaker 1: in New York City. She knows confrontation, so I asked
Speaker 1: her how she managed to overcome the year and anger
Speaker 1: that can come with that. She told me a story
Speaker 1: about what it was like to return to New York
Speaker 1: after years of practice in California. I got off at
Speaker 1: Penn Station, as one as one does, and I left
Speaker 1: the relative space of being on the train and I
Speaker 1: entered into the sea of people that is the life
Speaker 1: of New York. And in that moment, like I felt
Speaker 1: this release of like, oh so good. And it became
Speaker 1: super clear to me in that moment that what happens
Speaker 1: in that space of confrontation is you can see it
Speaker 1: as confrontation with all of these other people, but if
Speaker 1: you're open to it, you recognize that it's actually what
Speaker 1: it is as a conference tation or a meeting with yourself. Hmm.
Speaker 1: And when it's a meeting with yourself, then all of
Speaker 1: it is profound. Every single person, every single person is
Speaker 1: a meeting with yourself like velcro, right, it's like if
Speaker 1: there's nothing to rub, it just all like smooths by.
Speaker 1: But if you've got a little like stickiness there, it's
Speaker 1: like a little you know, then people's hooks get on
Speaker 1: that your that those fuzzy like gnarly places in you,
Speaker 1: and so then it's an opportunity instead of you know,
Speaker 1: you're in my way, you get right. It wasn't that.
Speaker 1: It was it was this like, oh yeah, oh there,
Speaker 1: I am, oh right, it's like and and that that
Speaker 1: was very very clear. Remember you once described sitting meditation
Speaker 1: as a kind of curiosity, and that really struck me.
Speaker 1: I remember right after you profound a profound curiosity. I
Speaker 1: remember sitting after that at this retreat with that in
Speaker 1: my head, and it was kind of hot and there
Speaker 1: was a like a beat of sweat was just down
Speaker 1: my face, and I was really annoyed by it. And
Speaker 1: it was this embodiment of something that I felt like,
Speaker 1: I think I know what she's talking about, what it
Speaker 1: means to just sit and be curious as opposed to
Speaker 1: constantly trying to manage and control. But but again I wonder,
Speaker 1: I wonder, like, okay, so I just I say people
Speaker 1: to people in the podcast, all right, everyone being curious,
Speaker 1: domag and control, thank you, goodnight? And then what keeps
Speaker 1: people from going off and doing that? In other words,
Speaker 1: how does one it's one thing to know something and
Speaker 1: a different thing to live it and embody it. How
Speaker 1: do you cross that gap? I think you, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that's where practice comes in, right, we practice
Speaker 1: our way into contact with reality, a more truer reality,
Speaker 1: until it is familiar enough to us that we recognize
Speaker 1: the other thing is false, so that a bead of
Speaker 1: sweat is just a bead of sweat. It doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be an annoyance. It could first just be a feeling.
Speaker 1: Angel practices meditation in the neighborhood. Fred helped kids get
Speaker 1: there by showing them how to slow down and get quiet.
Speaker 1: There were long pauses on the show and moments when
Speaker 1: Fred would ask us to stop and reflect on a
Speaker 1: song or an image or just breathe. That kind of
Speaker 1: slowing down becomes really useful when we're hurt or overwhelmed,
Speaker 1: when someone makes us angry, that's when we really need
Speaker 1: to understand our motions to be able to get space
Speaker 1: from them. My practice is having the space right, carving
Speaker 1: the space out, and I mean just is a monumental
Speaker 1: feat in a world that is like constantly moving, and
Speaker 1: it moves maybe I would say about three four times
Speaker 1: as fast as it did when I was younger and
Speaker 1: entered into this practice. Just the mental commitment to carve
Speaker 1: that kind of space out in a in a society
Speaker 1: that's so much about doing to say, like I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna actually be doing anything. I'm not going to be
Speaker 1: accomplished anything or producing anything. And I think as a
Speaker 1: as a black person in particular, it frees me from
Speaker 1: the notion that I am defined by what I'm producing
Speaker 1: and for people that were brought to this land to
Speaker 1: to produce and have in so many ways organized ourselves
Speaker 1: and many of the campaigns organized for us by our
Speaker 1: leaders no shame or blame, but have been organized around
Speaker 1: our our our value in relationship to producing things. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I'm fond of saying these days. You know, I'm like,
Speaker 1: get us jobs, Like I mean, we have worked all
Speaker 1: we have, need to work for the next We don't.
Speaker 1: You know, we don't. You don't need to teach us
Speaker 1: how to work job skills. That's it, Like, that's a
Speaker 1: that's an oxy moron. Like our evidence of our job
Speaker 1: skills is this country. That's the man. They're not ready
Speaker 1: for this one, they're not ready for this conversation. So um.
Speaker 1: And so what I saw is these very particular opportunities
Speaker 1: to be a fugitive from this construct. So I think
Speaker 1: it's really it's it's really profound that just the act
Speaker 1: of the choosing of the silence, and and I get
Speaker 1: to defy some things. And I think what we're talking
Speaker 1: about is defying. Yes, we are talking about defying, I mean,
Speaker 1: and that is the thing I mean, they're Defiance is
Speaker 1: a really great word to bring into this conversation because
Speaker 1: I feel like when I'm talking about the power of
Speaker 1: someone representing love in the way that Fred Rogers represented it,
Speaker 1: and the way that that love, the way Fred Rogers
Speaker 1: said to kids, you matter in a way that maybe
Speaker 1: no one else in that kid's life was telling them.
Speaker 1: It's tempting to think of that as a kind of
Speaker 1: affirmation and a kind of and that's what's that's what's
Speaker 1: made fun of when we make fun of Fred Rogers.
Speaker 1: But the more I think about it, the more I
Speaker 1: think of it as an act of denial, an act
Speaker 1: of resistance, denying this what he saw encroaching on kids
Speaker 1: and what then proceeded to over the next because he
Speaker 1: started in nine, so the world was similar in some
Speaker 1: ways but wildly different in other ways, and that he
Speaker 1: wanted to deny this. What he saw was this encroaching
Speaker 1: idea that your value was only based on how how
Speaker 1: much you please people, or how much people like you
Speaker 1: or how much money you earn, or if you could
Speaker 1: ap them all up, you can earn a lot of money.
Speaker 1: Then people are pleased and they like you maybe get
Speaker 1: that all together. But really, what Fred Rogers was talking about,
Speaker 1: seen through certain lends, was a kind of resistance to
Speaker 1: the to the momentum of our culture. And that's where
Speaker 1: I think of him as like an incredibly strong person. No.
Speaker 1: I think that his his his active resistance was fairly
Speaker 1: um demonstrated and strong and persistent and you know all
Speaker 1: of the things that make a warrior a warrior, right,
Speaker 1: Like not a war monger, not a soldier, right, but
Speaker 1: a warrior. What is that difference? Um, I think of
Speaker 1: soldiers is following instructions, you know. I think as I
Speaker 1: think of warriors in the heroic sense of warrior, as
Speaker 1: people that are charged, right, They're charged with a cause.
Speaker 1: I think the power and the potency of him, like
Speaker 1: any true teacher of wisdom, is that he he was
Speaker 1: talking to you each and every single time. And maybe
Speaker 1: he would turn his attention and he would talk to
Speaker 1: Mr mcpheeley or you know whoever else or you know, um,
Speaker 1: but there were those times when he turned directly to
Speaker 1: the camera and he spoke to you, he spoke to me,
Speaker 1: and so that held ness, especially for those of us
Speaker 1: that were made to feel as if the society wasn't
Speaker 1: constructed for our sense of belonging unless we vied for
Speaker 1: that belonging, unless we quote unquote earned that belonging to
Speaker 1: have someone turned to you directly you and say, just
Speaker 1: as you are, your loved, just as you are, exactly
Speaker 1: as you are in this moment, not another moment, not
Speaker 1: a moment to come, not a promised moment. Right even
Speaker 1: even our religions were selling us on a promised moment
Speaker 1: to come one day, and he was saying, no, right now,
Speaker 1: like right this particular moment, which I think of, as
Speaker 1: you know, as Howard Thurman would say, is like the
Speaker 1: religion of Jesus, not the religion about Jesus right doing
Speaker 1: the work of Jesus. That was to like hold love
Speaker 1: right there in the space. And you know, when we
Speaker 1: say this word love, people are probably turning to their
Speaker 1: warm fuzzy feelings and looking for that. And I'm not
Speaker 1: talking about the warm fuzzy feelings. And if it generated
Speaker 1: warm fuzzy feelings for you, great, but I think what
Speaker 1: it generated from me is space, right, it's the space.
Speaker 1: It was the space to be me. I didn't look
Speaker 1: at Fred Rogerson go oh, my god, warm and fuzzy.
Speaker 1: I love him, you know. In fact, I didn't think
Speaker 1: much about him, and I think that that is the
Speaker 1: most profound love is it to make me think about
Speaker 1: him and how I felt about him. It made me
Speaker 1: think about how it felt about me. How do you
Speaker 1: feel about you? What is your value? How do you
Speaker 1: even know? Above my desk at home, where I write this,
Speaker 1: I have a small reminder that says you are enough.
Speaker 1: I look at it all the time, not because I
Speaker 1: believe it, but because I actually don't. I mean, I
Speaker 1: am enough for what, for you, for the world, for me.
Speaker 1: In my forty or five years, I've had a lot
Speaker 1: of experiences, but maybe the most defining one is the
Speaker 1: experience of being shown in myrriad ways that I'm not enough,
Speaker 1: that my life doesn't matter. Many people have had this
Speaker 1: same experience. My mother and I were homeless for a time,
Speaker 1: often hungry. I was violently sexually assaulted at the age
Speaker 1: of seven, and it wouldn't be the last time I
Speaker 1: was called racial slurs by classmates and even occasionally by teachers.
Speaker 1: I grew up to watch people who looked like me
Speaker 1: beat and shot on television while unarmed, only to have
Speaker 1: the justice system decide time and time and time again
Speaker 1: that no wrong had been committed in the eyes of
Speaker 1: the law. I've looked down the barrel of guns just
Speaker 1: because people thought my mother and I didn't belong in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood that we lived in. Am I enough? Do
Speaker 1: I have value? Does my life really matter? I can
Speaker 1: tell myself that it does, But what does it take
Speaker 1: for me to believe it? Of course, not believing that
Speaker 1: I am enough? It's not just a personal problem. It's
Speaker 1: a collective one, because how can I believe in your
Speaker 1: value if I don't even believe in my own In
Speaker 1: this life, people like me and maybe like you, we've
Speaker 1: had to find our own value, our own worth. And
Speaker 1: one voice, like the voice of Fred Rogers telling me
Speaker 1: that I am enough is powerful and it is beautiful,
Speaker 1: and I want to believe it. I love believing it.
Speaker 1: But his voice alone is not enough to undo an
Speaker 1: entire history. I wish it was, but it's not. But
Speaker 1: his example, the way he lived now, that has impact,
Speaker 1: the way Reverend Angel lives, that has impact the people
Speaker 1: in your lives that you've called to tell us about
Speaker 1: that has impact. Fred Rogers lived his life in service
Speaker 1: to something greater than himself. Let's call it love, and
Speaker 1: not warm feelings. I like you a lot. Love, but
Speaker 1: love in the way that Ashley defines it as action,
Speaker 1: as accountability, Love in the way that Reverend Angel defines
Speaker 1: it as space. Space to see others, to understand others.
Speaker 1: This was not his only devotion, but it seemed to
Speaker 1: be his primary devotion, and I don't think he could
Speaker 1: have done this work without it. Fred was devoted and disciplined.
Speaker 1: He swam every morning, He rose early and studied and
Speaker 1: prayed and meditated on how he would be an active
Speaker 1: force for good every day. A producer for his Showow
Speaker 1: told us that each time he entered the TV studio
Speaker 1: he uttered a small prayer, Dear God, lets some part
Speaker 1: of this be yours. He famously made sure that every
Speaker 1: one of the hundreds of letters he received each week
Speaker 1: was thoughtfully answered. His dedication was to loving us, accepting us,
Speaker 1: showing up for us every day. For nine episodes forty years.
Speaker 1: Through the television neighborhood he created, he showed us how
Speaker 1: to love like that too. That was Fred Rogers way
Speaker 1: of making the world better? So what is yours? There
Speaker 1: is no one sentence I can say, or that Fred
Speaker 1: Rogers can say that solves all of our problems. Our freedom,
Speaker 1: our love for ourselves, our care for one another does
Speaker 1: not come overnight. It is something we build bit by bit,
Speaker 1: one action at a time, maybe even one moment at
Speaker 1: a time. But I do not have doubt. I believe
Speaker 1: in your ability to imagine and live something better than
Speaker 1: this because I'm learning to do it myself. I'm proud
Speaker 1: of you. I'm grateful to you, and I love you.
Speaker 1: Here's the sweater going into the closet. Here's the jacket
Speaker 1: going on. Me hmm. There'll be the night time and
Speaker 1: then I'll come the new day, and that's when you
Speaker 1: and I will be together again. Thank you for listening
Speaker 1: to Finding Fred. Our show is produced by Transmitter Media.
Speaker 1: The team is Dan O'Donnell, Jordan Bailey, and Maddie Foley.
Speaker 1: Our editor is Sarah Nicks. The executive producer for Transmitter
Speaker 1: Media is Gretta Cohne. Executive producers at Fatherly are Simon
Speaker 1: Isaac's and Andrew Berman. Thanks to the team at I
Speaker 1: Heart Media. Special thanks to all of our guests. Many
Speaker 1: thanks also to Fred Rogers Productions to show Negri into
Speaker 1: the studio. Engineers at You See Berkeley. Extra special thanks
Speaker 1: to Tim lie Barger who runs the site neighborhood archive
Speaker 1: dot com. It's a listing of every song, every episode,
Speaker 1: every character on Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. It's been an amazing
Speaker 1: resource for our team. Rick Kwan makes the show sound beautiful.
Speaker 1: Theme music is by Blue Dot Sessions and interstitial music
Speaker 1: by Alison Layton Brown. That's it for our show. You
Speaker 1: can come back and listen to all of our episodes
Speaker 1: and tell your friends to do the same. I'm Carvil Wallace.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening.