Imagine thinking “civility” was what Fred Rogers stood for, and not, you know, passionate speech and action in the cause of assisting the weak and defenseless.
(Not the OP, to be clear. The OP gets it. The essayist.)
Just watch the show. See how fiercely he’s committed to providing a safe haven for the kids who watch, how viscerally he identifies with their struggles.
Fred Rogers wasn't preaching civility. He was advocating for, and modeling, compassion and decency—and that's not at all the same thing.
I don't give a damn about civility—I think civility is farce, that it frequently provides cover for those who would do harm to others with impunity and without consequence. But I try every day to comport myself in a way that reflects Fred Rogers' values.
Fred Rogers understood that anger can eat us up, but he also understood that anger is valid—that sometimes we feel angry, that sometimes we SHOULD feel angry.
More than that, Fred understood that our anger—the anger we feel "when the whole wide world seems oh, so wrong"—can be generative.
Fred said that our experience of anger, of feeling it and acknowledging it, but channelling it and controlling it rather than letting it control us, is "something deep inside that helps us become what we can."
Fred Rogers was famously slow to anger, but he understood and respected the impulse in others, and felt it himself on occasion. As he once put it, "the only thing that really angers me is something that's demeaning to somebody else."
When I think about how I'm falling short of the example that Fred set, I sometimes think about being too quick to snipe at somebody, too willing to belittle someone, and I do try hard not to do that.
But where I fall short, and I do, it's far more often by failing to put my shoulder to the wheel, failing to confront what needs to be confronted and to stand up for what's right, to live a life in service.
All right. Off to face the day.
