The Profile Dossier — Fred Rogers, the Nicest Man in the Neighborhood

Polina Marinova on Mister Rogers, written into the 2020 protests. The takeaway Kyle marked: Kindness is an under-appreciated skill — not just a thing we should do, but something that we are.

Notes

• I kept coming back to one man whose goal was to spread kindness, grace, and compassion: Mister Rogers.
• Fred Rogers always opened his show with the song, “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.” But as we look around our own neighborhoods today, we don’t quite see the beauty. Protests are raging across the country. The world is reeling from a global pandemic. Loved ones are losing their jobs and shuttering their businesses.
• In 1969, racial tensions were rising, and Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated a year earlier. Pools around the country were still segregated despite the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. So Rogers asked Officer Clemmons, a black police officer played by François Clemmons, if he’d like to cool his feet with him in a children’s wading pool. As he was drying off Clemmons’ feet with a towel, Rogers told his young viewers, “Sometimes a minute like this will really make a difference.”
• Rogers kept a file on Junod, in which he laid out four principles of journalism that he hoped he would stick to: 1) Journalists are human beings not stenographers, human beings not automatons. 2) Point out injustice when you have to. 3) Point out beauty when you can. 4) Be aware of celebrating the wonders of creation. Journalism
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=907yEkALaAY
  • “What matters in this life is more than winning for ourselves,” Rogers says. “What really matters is helping others win too — even if it means slowing down and changing our course now and then.”
• Techniques to Try:
  • Remember what it’s like to be a child: Mister Rogers wrote a manual intended to teach doctors how to talk to children. The first sentence directly addressed the doctors who would be reading it: “You were a child once, too.” This sentence is the reason Rogers was so powerful in connecting with everyone — from children to CEOs to celebrities to educators. If you want to find compassion, look for the child in the politician, the police officer, and the protester. The idea is that if you remember what it’s like to be a child, you’ll find Empathy for those you consider strangers.
  • Find the nuance: We tend to look at people in absolute terms. You may categorize yourself as “good” and someone with different views than you as “bad.” That’s a mistake, according to Rogers. He once wrote a song that reminds us that we are complex, multi-faceted beings: “Sometimes people are good, and they do just what they should, but the very same people who are good sometimes are the very same people who are bad sometimes. It’s funny, but it’s true. It’s the same, isn’t it for me… Isn’t it the same for you?” Compromise
  • Look for the helpers: In times of disaster, Rogers’s mom would tell him, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” This Rogers quote circulated the Internet following the tragic Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 alongside images of fellow runners rushing to help the injured. “I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers—so many caring people in this world,” Rogers says.
  • Validate emotions, don’t suppress them: Despite his innocent and disarming demeanor, Rogers was very much in touch with his own dark side. In the show, he encourages children to turn their anger, frustration, or disappointment into something productive. There are appropriate outlets for those feelings, he says, like banging on the keys of a piano, going for a swim, or pounding some clay. “Everyone has lots of ways of feeling. And all of those feelings are fine. It’s what we do with our feelings that matters in this life,” he says.
• Quotes
  • “Listening is where love begins: Listening to ourselves and then to our neighbors.”
  • “It’s really easy to fall into the trap of believing that what we do is more important than what we are. Of course, it’s the opposite that’s true: What we are ultimately determines what we do!”
  • “How many times have you noticed that it’s the little quiet moments in the midst of life that seem to give the rest extra-special meaning?”
  • “Like all of life’s important coping skills, the ability to forgive and the capacity to let go of resentments most likely take root very early in our lives.” Forgiveness