I never appreciated Mr. Rogers when I was a child. He was too quiet, too slow moving, too methodical for my taste. I was used to fast, loud and chaotic. 

After watching the documentary "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" I realized not only did I grow tired of all the drama somewhere along the way, I'm finding the silence to be quite appealing. 

Perhaps life is best lived in increments after all. Maybe the older, mellower adult is finally rubbing off on my inner wild child who found Fred Rogers to be too tame to be of any interest. Funny it should turn out that the callous cruelties of the world make many of us reach for something softer, kinder, gentler. 

But then again, maybe there's nothing strange about that notion at all. Maybe it's as simple as taming the beast by releasing all the pent up rage we accumulate when the world is less than fair and some of the people less than friendly. Maybe that's what this Grand Design had in mind all along.

T.S. Eliot said:

Eliot's quote reminds me of my work on the inner self. Why are we Niagara Falls when we watch the Rogers' documentary? Because we know deep down what it means not to be called special. We also know now that is what we truly want to be. Most of all we know that is the answer to what ails us.

Fred Rogers wasn't talking only to children. He was talking to every one of us. He was talking to himself. He was saying that each person is an invaluable contribution to this world just by virtue of having been born. He didn't ask for anything, tell us to be anything and didn't care if we amounted to anything, because we were...we ARE already perfect. He just wanted people to know that.

It is noted in the documentary that there was a backlash when some critics accused Rogers of being the reason for people's indifference and excess. Telling children they were special caused them to feel entitled, that they didn't need to work for anything as adults. They completely missed his point, we're not special because we should be, we're special because it's inherent. And with that knowledge comes a responsibility to act.

Blaming Rogers took the duty for child-rearing away from the home and unfairly put it in the lap of a seventeen-inch television screen. The question isn’t what did Mr. Rogers do, but what aren’t we doing for ourselves in order to learn, to excel, to grow? Are we making our children feel special by giving them things, or by doing things with them? Are we reciting self-affirmations only to sabotage with actions contrary to our intentions? Are we feeding the beast, or finding ways to nurture our inner beauty? Fred Rogers gave us the truth, but he couldn’t reach inside of us and make that truth a reality. That is up to each and every one of us.

This is where a village comes in. What we can’t do ourselves, we allow the community to help us with. Once we’re able to identify with the feelings, it turns into a knowing. Then we share that knowing with others. This is how the people in “Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood” function best. 

Mr. Rogers knew this. He also knew that no matter how much he gave, he needed to give more because it's far too easy for broken children to become broken adults. But he was only one man, capable of only so much. We no longer live in a world that allows us the luxury of waiting for the next Fred Rogers to tell us our worth. It's up to every one of us to stop the cycle that has prohibited us for far too long from feeling the unique, special beings that we are. 

If we want the world to become a better place, it needs to start with the truth about ourselves, and that truth is that each and every one of us is an invaluable member of the human race. The only question left to ask ourselves, is: what do we plan to do about that?