A Neighborhood Of Our Own

 So...I was watching a tv special this week about Fred Rogers and his beloved show, "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood." (If you missed it, try to catch the re-run on PBS titled "Mister Rogers: It's You I Like." So very worthwhile!) And as I was watching, I was transported back to my childhood and the fact that Mister Rogers was one of the shaping influences in how I view the world. At the time when I was watching his show every week, I didn't realize how much the ideas he shared on that program were helping me to know how to view people and life. Now, at almost thirty, I'm seeing all this footage over again and amazed at how it unknowingly affected the course of my life. 

 My family didn't allow for much tv watching when I was little because they wanted me to grow up creating my own entertainment. But Mister Rogers was an exception to the rule. We hardly missed an episode when I was young. I learned to appreciate quality music from the world-renowned musicians he had on the program like cellist Yo-Yo Ma or trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. I learned about how things were made or how things work. But I also learned life-lessons like how to separate truth from imagination thanks to his "world of make-believe," complete with talking puppets, costumes, and all kinds of fun things. I learned how to respect people with disabilities after seeing his acceptance of those who were handicapped. His vulnerability and willingness to try new things was refreshing. His acceptance of those who looked or acted differently from him was rare on public tv. Love motivated his every show, and us viewers felt like we truly were his "friend." 

 After seeing this program and re-living some long-forgotten childhood songs and memories, I saw deeper truth than perhaps I realized at a younger age. His message of personal value and worth, of cultivating your giftings, of loving others regardless of who they are or what they look like...all those things were building blocks in my foundation for who I would become someday. And they are all things our world is in desperate need more than ever! I see now that what we choose to let influence us in our formative years does shape our worldview more than we realize. And part of our problems as a society now is that we are letting fiction shape our young minds more than fact. We let cartoons, video games, violent shows, politically correct entertainment, and so many other things influence our youth so that truth, beauty, and goodness no longer govern the childhood years. We choose to let a screen entertain them more than a book. Or we let others supply the music for them instead of encouraging them to sing, play something, and make music on their own. We coop them up inside too much, lessening their exposure to the beautiful world of God's creation. We may be making advances in math, science, and so many other things, but we're losing the essence of life. And then we wonder why so many of our young people have mental and emotional health issues when there is much we could've done earlier to help them lead a balanced life. 

 Mister Rogers Neighborhood, while merely a tv show, incorporated aspects of real life that helped you learn what it really means to love people unconditionally, to accept others' differences readily, to live your own life fully. He talked about things like, why it's ok to be sad sometimes, why friendship is important, why anything worth doing is worth doing excellently,  why we are all supposed to make the world a better place for us having been in it. Those lessons stayed with us viewers for all our lives. Mister Rogers never lied to us. He was always honest. He addressed even the hard topics of life with gentleness and care, always giving the impression that he had time for other people. As I would later discover reading about him in my adult years, Mister Rogers was like that in real life to everybody and not just on tv. The songs he wrote like "There Are Many Ways To Say, I Love You" "It's You I Like" or "You Are My Friend, I Like You" all drove home the message that, with the right attitude, there's really nobody in this life whom you shouldn't love and care about. 

 We could all use a bit more of Fred Rogers' attitude in this hurting world. There's really nothing on tv that fills that spot anymore and a generation of young people are being shaped by influences that are divorced from reality. Maybe it's time we started bringing back the principles of Mister Rogers Neighborhood in our own world. Maybe we begin by re-thinking the things we read and watch, or the people we're around that influence us or our children on a regular basis. There's still much good to be seen and experienced in the world, but it's up to us to find and share it!