What We Love


Dear Eugene,

Last night I watched a new documentary on "America's favorite neighbor": Mister Rogers.

I needed to hold back tears for the entire 94 minutes.  Strange enough it was easy, to hold back tears, something that's often not very easy for me.  I think it's because, like Mister Rogers himself, the movie is not sentimental.

I don't know if this comes as a small surprise to you, that I said Mister Rogers is not sentimental, and if the surprise becomes a little bigger after you had a chance to reflect a little and come to the same obvious conclusion: Yes, "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" is many things but not sentimental.

How we keep missing the little obvious things, that when words and impressions loaded with prejudice of the most simpleminded kind happened upon our lips we would let them come through unchecked again and again despite the nagging suggestion at the back of our head and somewhere beside our heart that things and people can't be as straightforward as we make them out to be for our own convenience?

"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye."  Mister Rogers put this quote beside his desk to keep reminding himself of the obvious, the importance of our inner being, something of a strange foreigner to our callous outer shell, coached by our culture to treat with denial, suspicion and even hostility.

No wonder it is so easy for us to say: This person is obviously that.  We have successfully deceived ourselves to believe "what we see is what we get"--or more like, "what we see is all we get."  Is it obvious that for being a TV icon Mister Rogers hated the television?  Or one who claims to "love watching movies" but has an appetite only for derivatives of low common denominators is in fact very hostile to the possibility of the medium?

What we purport to love we don't love enough to hate what frustrates our longing, even when it comes to loving ourselves, something we all somehow believe we're in the business of doing.

Mister Rogers loved his special number: 143.  "It takes one letter to say I and four letters to say love and three letters to say you," he said.  For the last 30 years of his life he kept his weight at 143 pounds, no more, no less.  Imagine the discipline, the will, the stubborn love.

We are what we love, that has to be the most obvious thing in life.

Yours, Alex

Comments

  1. RoseFebruary 8, 2019 at 2:20 PM

    I was impressed by way Mister Rogers loves with conviction, imagination, humility and self-control. I was especially touched by the way he took the wrong and used it for the right and conquered anger or evil by unveiling the truth. I imagine he was not only not sentimental but stubborn and can be difficult at times. Doing something that he claims to be “not easy” for so many years must have taken a strong character.

    One may have difficulty grasping what Mister Rogers has accomplished all because he took God’s command seriously. Only if we know the Love...

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