Help the Helpers

On being your best self. On the least of these. On the virtues of a cup of tea.

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Episode Transcript

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hm hm. Mr Rogers tried to get us to be

(01:23):
our best self. That's a phrase that you know, we
hear variations of it a lot now, right, like live
your best life, be your best self. What we usually
mean by that now is seek pathways to your own
joy and the kind of self celebration you want to experience,
which I think is great and I am a firm

(01:45):
believer in that self love is really radical and important.
But when we say that Mr Rogers wanted people to
be their best self, there's something about like just encouraging
people to be good, right, to be good and to
be kind to themselves and to other people that I
actually think is a really rare message. I don't know

(02:11):
who is telling children or anyone be kind, you know,
and in a way that is lived out in their
example and not like moralizing or pedantic or condescending. Fred
Rogers is everywhere right now, on T shirts and calendars

(02:32):
and coffee mugs. There's a movie and multiple books, articles
and major magazines and of course this podcast. And it
seems to me the reason we're seeing him everywhere is
that we believe, collectively there's something in what he taught
us that we need right now. But are we understanding

(02:53):
the right thing about him and his work? Or are
we just in love with the niceness, the nostalgia, the
feel good. Not that those are bad things in and
of themselves, but are they enough? Is it enough to
fall in love with this idea that each of us
is likable? Is that even the right idea? Because I

(03:16):
don't think that's all there was to his message. I'm
Carvil Wallace and this is Finding Fred, a podcast about
Fred Rogers from High Heart Media and Fatherly in partnership
with Transmitter Media. Fred Rogers grew up during the Depression,

(03:40):
through World War Two and the Holocaust. He had seen
how horrible people could be to one another, and his
show spoke to that. It launched just months before Bobby
Kennedy's assassination, and Fred made a p s A in
response to it, and just a few weeks after he
officially retired, he made another p s A right after
September eleven. We've talked about how Fred didn't want to

(04:04):
do the announcement at all in the face of such
enormous violence and tragedy. He said he couldn't see how
it would do any good, but he did it anyway.
The writer and educator e Viewing, who you remember from
episode two, was watching there's this video that I've watched
a lot where he addresses us as adults. You know.

(04:26):
He's saying, sometimes I see you all on the streets.
I run into you, those of you who grew up
in the neighborhood, you know, And when I see you,
I tell you, just like I did when you were
very small, that I'm just so proud of you, you know,
and I like you just the way you are. A
lot of people who heard Fred's p s A took

(04:47):
comfort in his message look for the helpers. But Eve
heard something else. He is talking to you as an individual,
but now as an adult, and that's his opportunity to
say something else or to like break this character and
the thing he chooses to say is I still see you.
I'm still proud of you and see the child in you.

(05:09):
And I think that when we talk about forgiving people
and not believing in monsters, to me, that's what much
of that amounts to, is knowing that everybody was somebody's child,
you know, who has been hurt, or who has been afraid,
or who's been trying their best to learn, or who's
been trying to be resilient in a difficult situation. We've
talked about what it means to do what Fred did,

(05:31):
listen carefully and speak to the children inside people. But
what are we supposed to do when the child is
afraid and acting out, throwing tantrums and destroying things. What
are we supposed to do when the child inside other
people makes them dangerous and destructive, and when that's making
us feel afraid like we want to lash out and

(05:52):
hurt people who are hurting us. What are we supposed
to do then? And who can show us how to
act in a world like this one here today? My
mom told me all the time and continues to tell me,
that you know, your responsibility is to be a light bringer,
and your job is to be a door opener, not

(06:15):
a gatekeeper. And all of us have that grandma, that neighbor,
that uncle, that guy on the corner store. You know.
I remember like riding the train with my mom and
we didn't have a car, and going down to the
train station and there was this South Asian man who
ran the convenience store in the train station, and you know,

(06:36):
whenever we went to get on the train, he would
give me like a small caramel square, you know, those
like little cubes, just like a no brand, no name,
like caramel cube. And those are the small moments as
a kid that I just remember feeling like, oh, I'm somebody.
Somebody told me that I was special today. And I
think that message can come from a lot of messengers,
and definitely race and class and culture and religion and

(06:59):
in giag graphie and all those things can make it
harder to here, but it usually comes through loud and
clear if the person really cares about you. There are
helpers everywhere, people who really see us and are kind
to us, and there are also people who show us

(07:20):
how to be helpers, who model it for us. My
paternal grandfather, incidentally, is a white man who is a
lay Presbyterian minister. He grew up on a really small
farm in the depression in rural Illinois, and in so
many ways reminds me of Mr Rogers. He has a

(07:42):
uniform like Mr. Rogers. He just wears like short sleeve,
button down shirts in the same way that Mr Rogers
always wears his card. Again, but my grandfather has children
and grandchildren that have lived just radically different lives than him,
you know, in terms of like race, class, culture, interests,

(08:04):
pol just like everything that you can think of. And
he just is such a deeply, deeply kind and caring person.
My uncle married a really awesome woman who didn't grow
up in the church or anything like that, and I
remember she said when she met my grandfather, she was like, Oh,
this is the first real Christian I've ever met, Like

(08:25):
this is the first person that actually they say they're
a Christian and it means that they like do all
this stuff that Jesus said to do right. And he's
always just made me feel completely unconditionally loved and accepted.
But I also see him treat other people that way
in a way that makes it clear that it's not
just about me being his grandchild, but what he believes

(08:46):
about the world. And going to visit my grandparents and
just meeting random people that were staying in their house
temporarily because that's what they needed in the moment also
made a big impression on me as a kid that
I could come and meet somebody and just be told like, oh,
you know, they needed to stay here for for this
period of time because of X y Z. And I

(09:07):
think that that idea of an open home quite literal
in in both the case of my grandfather and the
case of Mr Rogers, right Like, I think that's something
also that's not incidental that we're in Mr Rogers's house.
He's welcoming us into his house. Eve's grandfather showed her
one way to be open and generous in a world
that seems hell bent on the opposite. I don't I

(09:30):
don't identify as a Christian um, but I think that
even though I don't identify that way or as a
particularly religious person, I'm nevertheless deeply moved and influenced by
a lot of Christian teachings, and one of the Biblical
lines that I think about a lot is um the
idea of the least of these Jesus says, I'm paraphrasing,

(09:53):
but basically like that which you do onto the least
of these, you do unto me, and the idea that
in every situation, as a society, in a family, in
a community, your job is to find the people that
are the most vulnerable and to make sure that they're protected.
And when you do that, as a general rule of thumb,
everything else will be good. Everything else will follow. That's

(10:14):
really important to me. You know. After the election in sixteen,
my kids were thirteen and eleven, and they said, they
said to me, what happened? What happened, like, explained to
me what that was? What is happening? And the only
explanation that I could come up with was like, well, look,

(10:36):
there are some people who believe that it is it
is your responsibility to care for others and that that
is and that is a primary thing and that you
must do that. And then there are some people who
think that that is, that it's the responsibility to care
for your own and everyone else just needs to figure
out for themselves, and that is Ultimately, what appears to
have happened last night is that some people who believe

(10:57):
that second thing appeared to have gained more power. You know,
I was like your mother and I we know what
we believe. We believe that we must care for others
like that is what we fundamentally believe. We're never not
going to believe that that is just who we are,
and You're going to have to figure out who you
are in the world. You know. I've done a fair
amount of teaching in in prisons, and the prison that

(11:21):
I teach in is a maximum security prison where people
are there for very long term or life sentences. And
one of the rules that we have is that we
don't we don't ask people like what they did or
why they're there. I know just from history that like
if not of the people that I'm dealing with in
that space are there because of the drug war, are

(11:44):
there because of poverty, are there because of unresolved trauma
in their own lives. And the idea that like one
out of those one hundred might just actually be a
psychopath doesn't make it worth it for me to focus
on that to me, remote possibley when I could be
focusing on like the human conversation that we're going to have.

(12:05):
And so to me, that's that's the idea of of
grace is just like assuming even if you can't quite
work your way up to loving people, which is like
the Jesus standard. And it's okay for us to not
all be Jesus, at least understanding that people are human
beings and not not monsters. You've heard me ask a

(12:27):
lot of people, how I like you just the way
you are? Applies to those who hurt us, who hurt others,
who are hurting whole groups of people and tearing apart
families and communities and institutions that do good in the world.
Would Fred Rogers like them just the way they are?

(12:47):
Eaves says, that's the wrong question. We spent a lot
of time asking the question like what about the bad people,
like are we adequately punishing the bad people, which usually
is a distraction from making sure that the sin who's
actually been hurt is okay. And we've set up a
society where we tend to be really obsessed with punishing

(13:09):
people rather than actually caring for the people that have
been harmed. And that is a disregard that shows a
disregard for the idea of caring for the least of these.
And if you believe that most of those bad things
themselves come from un dealt with harm, than the best
thing that we can do is deal with the harm.

(13:30):
In Mark, Jesus says, the poor you will always have
with you, and you can help them whenever you want,
but you will not always have me. The idea is
that one day Jesus would leave his followers. Like all
things he was saying, his presence is impermanent. The only

(13:51):
permanent thing is that people will still need help, and
we must continue to help those who need it. Notice
he asn't say I'm gonna be gone, so I'm gonna
need you to keep on crushing all the bad guys
and making sure they learn their lessons. Like Eves said,
his focus is not unfixing the bad ones, but on
helping the needy ones. But that's hard. Sometimes Sometimes I

(14:20):
feel like I have to keep an eye on what
I'm afraid of or what can hurt me. I have
to make sure it's locked away or properly defended against.
The things I'm afraid of are so loud and bright
and distracting that it's hard to turn my attention away
from them, even for a moment. Hard to give up
on the idea that my job is to make sure

(14:42):
the bad people suffer. It's hard to do the quieter
and slower and maybe more vulnerable work of tending to
the people who have been wounded. I often feel too
scared and angry and hurt to do that. I feel
like I have too many people to protect. And maybe

(15:06):
that's why Fred Rogers was so focused on finding a
way to talk about our feelings, because maybe I can't
really help people until I spend a lot of time
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(17:00):
hope dot org today. One of the things that Fred
Todd is that in a child, every behavior is a

(17:23):
way the child communicates an underlying need. If we were
to apply that not just to children, but to grown ups,
we may find a behavior objectionable, or we may find
something that someone says objectionable. We may find another person's
opinion objectionable, but if we look deeper and see what

(17:48):
is the human need behind that, it doesn't mean we
have to agree with their opinions and actions and words,
but it does mean that we should and can have
m pasty and have a connection with the underlying human need.
This is John lay Lee. He is a senior lecturer
in Early childhood Education at Harvard. He spent much of

(18:11):
his professional career studying Fred's work. He was co director
of the Fred Rogers Center at St. Vincent's College, and
one of the courses he teaches at Harvard is about
simple Interactions, a way of working with kids that's based
in part on the work of Fred Rogers. Jen lay
also knows something about the dark side of human behavior.
He was born in Shanghai at the tail end of

(18:33):
the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the late sixties and early seventies.
The Chinese states sent millions of people who they decided
were bad neighbors in their eyes into forced labor and exile,
and murdered countless more. Jen Ley's parents were sent to
do manual work and rule China. He was often separated
from one or both of them. This was not a

(18:56):
culture of I like you just the way you are.
General moved to America at sixteen and discovered Mr Rogers
neighborhood in college where he was studying child development. Fred's
message of love and acceptance came as a revelation and
became gen Lay's model for how to communicate with both
children and adults. He told me that Fred became a

(19:19):
personal role model too, and before we get into it,
you should probably take a deep breath and relax, because
generally has a very thoughtful Fred rogers like demeanor. I
initially came to make available educational opportunities for all children,
but over time I think it becomes more and more

(19:42):
about how we can find people all around the world
who are doing that are the kind of people that
Fred would call heroes, um their ordinary heroes. I came
into the field very much want to be a helper,
and twenty years later I realized that perhaps the best

(20:04):
thing I could do is to find these helpers that
are already out there and do my best to support
them helps exactly helping the helpers. I think the most
important lesson that I took from Fred was this idea

(20:26):
that if you looked carefully around you, no matter where
you are, if you looked carefully, you will find that
there are people that are helping one another. The kindness
and trust and respect that are exemplified by Fred's work

(20:51):
is visible in real human communities. Not everyone talks just
like Mr Rogers or anything, but the way they listen
to children, the way they are able to pay attention
to not just what the child acts out on the surface,

(21:11):
but what do these behaviors tell us about the inner
needs of the child or the young person? You know.
I want to ask you a little bit about today's context, um,
because I when I look around, I see a lot

(21:33):
of fear and anger and frustration, and and a feeling
that things are rapidly getting worse in a in a
myriad of ways, and people feeling helpless and hopeless. I
wonder if you can imagine what kind of show he
would make today. Do you think he would continue along

(21:54):
the same path or would he find that he would
have to do something different. That's such a good question,
and I can't begin to imagine that I know what
he would do. But I think the underlying topic that

(22:18):
Fred was so interested in perhaps centers around this idea
of empathy. Fred's show is about confronting struggles and conflicts
rather than evading them. People of different ideas, different values
trying to work out their differences and still operate on

(22:42):
assumption of trust and respect for one another. And I
think Fred's work very strongly conveyed that a community is
a place where not everyone has to look the same,
not everyone even have to have the same interests, which
who's to live the same way? Um like, community is

(23:03):
simply a place where very diverse people get to live together,
to listen to one another and work through the differences
that they have. I think in a fearful world, we

(23:28):
have a tendency to accentuate every aspect that is different
between person one and person two. And as much as
Fred wanted to convey the message that all of us
are different and unique and special, Fred's underlying message, though,

(23:51):
is we are much more the same than we're different,
and that paradoxically, by point hinting out the uniqueness of
each individual, we actually come to understand our common humanity.
And that, to me is perhaps the spiritual root of empathy.

(24:18):
To be able to see the full humanity of the
person that we might fear. Mm hm, you know that
is such a weighty and heavy concept in this time. Um,

(24:38):
we live in a world in which there are systemic
abuses of people, and people feel the need to defend
themselves not just against individuals, but against systems, and and
I think a lot of times in those cases, people
feel like there's there's a there's a threat to their
survival that comes with that empathy that in order to

(25:04):
protect themselves and their families and who they love, they
can't allow themselves that empathy. You know, if you are
a targeted group in a genocide, is their use for
you in finding empathy for the person on the other
side of the friends. Fred often talked about the lesson

(25:27):
the most important lesson that he took from he's theology
professor in Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, which he went to ask
this professor one time what this particularly him means because
the him said something about, you know, the one thing,

(25:47):
the one small thing that made evil fall. And so
he went to ask the professor, you know what is
this one small thing? And the answer was the one
thing that evil cannot stand is forgiveness. And I think

(26:08):
as I read about the error in which my parents
and grandparents lived through. I think of a story. There
was an older gentleman that was very close to my family.
He was from West Virginia and became a minister, and
he and his wife and son were missionaries in China,

(26:35):
and after the World War two broke out, they were
taken by the Japanese and put inside a fairly bruto
concentration camp. And one of the commanders of the camp
were humane to the American prisoners, and the minister, his

(26:56):
name is Joe. Years later he sat down in a
Japanese house across the table from the commander of the
concentration camp, and the two of them shared the tea,
a cup of tea, and and I just think of
these things. They're almost illogical, but they are a reflection

(27:24):
of the fundamental trust that human beings, as much as
they're capable of evil and hatred, and and as much
as all of us have our fears and defensiveness, that
in the end, I think when Fred tells us that
we are special, he meant that there's something deep down

(27:46):
inside each of us, not just some of us, but
each of us without which humanity cannot survive. In his
public service, announcements following September eleven. He invoked I think
the Jewish saying that essentially means we are called to

(28:07):
be repairs of creation. And we can understand that in
more broadly outside the religious context as somehow that each
of us are called to be repairs of creation. And

(28:27):
what does repairing mean? Each of us is called to
be a repairer of creation? But how do we do that?
I think for everyone, though the question is the same,

(28:50):
the answer can be different. Not all of us can
sit down to tea with someone who represents the violent
forces of the state. The man from West Virginia, the
John Laigh talked about, could, but many of us cannot
and maybe should not. And there's good reason for that.
If someone breaks into your home and harms your family

(29:11):
or loved ones in some violent way, and then I
decide to sit down with them the next day for
a pleasant tea under the guise of forgiveness and radical empathy,
that may be a dramatic, heroic act for me, but
it might be incredibly disrespectful and harmful to you. We're
told all the time that the ultimate act of love

(29:32):
is to forgive the people who have hurt you. And
that anything less is a shortcoming, maybe an understandable one,
but a shortcoming nonetheless something to get over. But who
benefits most from the quick and incessant march towards forgiveness?
Isn't it often those who commit the heinous act to

(29:53):
begin with? Don't they want, deeply want for their victims
to hug them and to player that it's all good.
Wouldn't you have you ever harmed someone? Have you ever
participated in or benefited from someone's arm? Wouldn't you want

(30:15):
them to forgive you? The idea of forgiving one's enemies
loving one's enemies is a beautiful one, and maybe even
an ideal one, But it's also a complicated one. Sometimes
an act of love and caring toward an oppressor is
an act of harm toward the oppressed, or toward ourselves.

(30:35):
TV writer Megan Amram, a brilliant person in her own right,
put this idea very succinctly on Twitter quote you can't
be nice to everyone because being nice to certain people
is inherently cruel to others. The viewing is right that
after a point, it's not helpful to focus on what
to do about the bad people. That's why I'm grateful

(30:59):
that there are are other ways to be repairers of creation.
Eve teaches in an incarceration facility. I'm using my own
holiday party in my tiny little apartment to raise money
for victims of domestic violence, people who aren't able to
celebrate with friends and family as maybe we are. There
are acts of kindness towards children. The woman who raised

(31:20):
me used to go to the library to read stories
to foster kids. She also took in stray animals, and
even once she took in a stray kid named Carvel.
But more than that, there is the love and kindness
and acceptance that we show towards those who are struggling
and hurting in our families and our communities. There is

(31:45):
the willingness to listen, to hear, and perhaps most importantly,
to grow and change in response to the pain of others.
There is looking, really looking for what is special, what
is childlike, maybe even what is God like? And each
and every person that we encounter. That is what Fred

(32:09):
was showing us with the neighborhood. He was showing us
what it feels like to be treated as special and
important and necessary. He was showing each of us has
something inside of us that humanity needs, and for that
reason alone, we are valuable. And our task is not
only to help see and grow that valuable thing in

(32:30):
each other, it is to see and grow it within ourselves.
And even though the world isn't what it was when
Fred created his TV neighborhood in even if our lives
seem more complicated and difficult, there are people all around
us who are actively helping to make things better. There
are people alive right now who are showing us how

(32:52):
to make it better too. A couple of weeks ago,
we asked you to send in stories of people who
have shown you how to be a helper. Here's one
message we received from a listener named Juan Helloa um
here in Hawaii, actually on my way to my school
where I'm a teacher. I've been listening to your podcasts

(33:14):
and it's just inspired me. And every time I listened
to it, I think about one person who when I
was growing up back in New York in a small suburb,
white neighborhood, I was kind of an outcast because my
family was a Hispanic family and we never had too
many friends besides our family. But there was a lady
down the block. Named Denise and her and her son Jesse,

(33:36):
they would always always just be there for us. My
father was working two jobs, my mother never drove. So
Denise is the first that really took me out of
the community and to be on the neighborhood. She was
the first person to teach me to the ocean, which
now living in Hawaii means so much to me. She
took me to museums, she let me write books at
her house, and these kind of moments of joy are

(33:57):
things that I really stick with me still, and even
though like I'm not the best teacher by any means,
I think that that's something that's fundamentally what I try
and do daily. So I just want to give a
big shout out Denise and so the whole family, Jesse, Charlie, Brianna.
They were all there for me. But I definitely remember
just as a as a rock in my life and

(34:20):
just show me what it's like to be a good neighbor,
literally a good neighbor right down the block. I hope
you have a good one and more of that next
week and our final episode of Finding Fred. Finding Fred

(34:44):
is produced by Transmitter Media. Our team is Dan o'donald
Jordan Bailey and Maddie Foley. Our editor is Sarah Nis.
The executive producer for Transmitter Media is Gretta Cone. Executive
producers at Fatherly are Simon Isaacs and Andrew Berman. Thanks
to the team and I Heart Media. Our show is
mixed by Rick Kwan, music by Blue Dot Sessions and
Alison Layton Brown. If you like what you're hearing, rate

(35:07):
the show, review the show, and tell a friend I'm
Carvil Wallace. Thank you for listening. Teething can be a

(35:37):
real nightmare for your little ones. Highlands Naturals Baby oral
pain relief tablets can help ease the pain. It's gentle,
natural active ingredients like camemeo and arnica soothe your baby's mouth,
and gums made with ingredients derived from plant minerals and
other sources free of harsh chemicals. You can count on
Highlands for serious pain relief for your teething baby. Highlands
is a kinder way to care for teething. Visit Highlands

(35:58):
dot com. Slash kind that's h y l a n
DS dot com slash kind claims based on traditional homeopath
a practice, not accept the medical evidence. Not FD evaluated
what spring like in winter's favorite town, park City, Utah.
Imagine waking up on a blue bird day to ski
the greatest snow on Earth. Having three resorts, Park City, Mountain,
Deer Valley in Woodwork, Park City in your backyard, Exploring

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miles of wide open spaces by snowshoe or cross country skis.
Wandering our historic main street with its opera, ski scene
and award winning restaurants to discover spring in winter's favorite town.
Learn to visit safely at visit park City dot com.
The more we learn about COVID nineteen, the more questions

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we have. The biggest question now, what's next? What will
COVID bring in six months a year? If you're feeling
anxious about the future, You're not alone. Cal Hope offers
free COVID nineteen emotional support. Call eight three three three
one seven four six seven three or live chat at

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calhope dot org today