Episode Five: The Goodness of Fred Rogers

Welcome to The Neighborhood, a Mr. Rogers tribute podcast. I'm your host, Rick Lee James, of rickleejames.com, and I run the Mr. Rogers Quotes Twitter account found @MrRogersSay. As we walk into this podcast neighborhood, we want you to know that no matter where you are from, you are welcome here. I'm glad to be your neighbor. Every daughter, every son, every tribe, and every tongue, in the spirit of Fred Rogers and the life of welcome that he lived, welcome to the neighborhood. This week in the neighborhood, our subject is goodness.

He is our very own version of Mr. McFeely, always delivering good conversation for us on the program. He's an expert at helping people tell their stories. He produces engaging, innovative media for public radio, public television, and public events. He is the executive producer and host of Things Not Seen: Conversations About Culture and Faith, which airs weekly in Chicago on WYLL 1160 AM and is distributed by PRX. He is also the executive producer of the Francis Effect podcast David Dault, welcome to the neighborhood.

Rick, I'm always so glad to be back with you. Thank you again.

Well, how are you? We haven't really talked since our last recording. You doing all right?

I'm doing good. Uh, my kids are back at school, and I am also, uh, teaching this semester at, uh, Loyola's Institute for Pastoral Studies. And over the summer, just a few weeks ago, we closed on a house, and so that's been wonderful chaos in our life.

Very good. Well, I am so glad to be back with you today to talk about our topic, which is goodness this week. Good is a word that Mr. Rogers used a lot on his program, and when he would write, he would write about goodness. And as people listening will hear a little bit later in the show, we think that maybe Fred saw goodness as something different than a lot of other people do. Maybe he defined it in a different way. But in the meantime, you're always delivering good conversation here for us, and I'd love to hear some of your initial thoughts as we begin the show today about goodness.

Well, so one of the things I've been thinking, Rick, is when we use this word goodness— I mean, we use it all the time— but I'm wondering, when we— when you and I use this word goodness, what are we talking about? Are we talking about an action? Are we talking about a quality? What does it mean to say that a person or a thing is good? What does that mean to you?

Well, I think it can mean a lot of different things, and again, it's a very hard thing to define without using the word, isn't it? And I was thinking a little bit of maybe I would judge a piece of fruit as to whether or not it's good. It's not rotten, so it's good, you know, it's good to eat. But I think when we're talking about goodness, just distilled down to its form, I think, and I hope, I think about it a little bit in the way that Fred Rogers did, which I think It gets back to the essence and the core of who we are as created beings. Now, I'm a Christian and you're a Christian, so part of our belief system is that when God created us, he looked and he said, "It was good." That means something probably a little bit different to everybody, but I think it means that we were made in the image of something that is pure and something that is whole and something that is is really beautiful in many ways. And so that's where I come down on goodness, I guess. There's a lot more to define than I probably can in the short time we have, but that's my initial thoughts.

Well, one of the things that you just said, you connected goodness to beauty, and classically goodness, beauty, and truth are seen as being a sort of tight-knit collection of ideas. And one of the things that I love about Fred Rogers is that he managed not only to see the goodness in people, but he also managed to see the beauty in people, even people that society might want to push to the edges. And that to me speaks to the truth of what he's trying to do, which is— and this gets back to the quote that he says so much from Saint-Exupéry, where he says that when he says that he likes us just as we are, he's talking about that invisible quality inside of us. And it's hard for us sometimes in a society that is so fixed on appearance and outward things to remember that when we're dealing with someone, uh, even someone who may be acting ugly to us at the moment, that exactly what you just said— God pronounced them good, and that we are to try and find, just as Fred Rogers did, that quality in them that allows us to have companionship with them and empathy with them. But that's not always easy to do, is it, Rick?

No, it's not. And I think sometimes we have to, you know, actively return to a place of goodness and be reminded who we are and be reminded that the things that we do don't have to— especially if they're things that we would consider bad. Bad is almost easier to define than good in some ways. But the things that we do that are bad, we were not created to be bad. There's something that that pulls us, I think, back to the goodness and back to the light. There's something maybe even in our conscience that if our conscience is not clear, it just doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel good. And one thing I love about Fred Rogers is he would often talk about it's so important to find out what you feel good about doing, being that there are things in this life that that we can do that because it's right and because it's just and because it's moral, it can give us a good feeling. And the opposite is also true. Those other things can really bring us down.

Well, what's interesting to me about what you just said is the, the good feeling, the pleasurable feeling about doing good and being good. I think that, that oftentimes we get the opposite, or we fall into the opposite, and that is that it starts to feel good to us to dwell in the bad. Maybe you've been in an office space or maybe you've been in a situation where you've been around people that gossip, and sometimes it can start to feel good to tell stories, or we like to complain about the service at a restaurant or something, and it gives us a little feeling of power at that moment. And one of the things that I really like about Fred Rogers is how actively he seemed to want to go the opposite direction from that. So instead of finding little momentary pleasure in dwelling in the bad, he actively sought out the good in situations. And by doing that, he managed to build a habit. And we've talked about habit before on, on these episodes, but he managed to build a habit of searching for the good. And that led to, I think, uh, an ongoing quality of his life that was, that was very, very robust and very, very inviting to others.

Yeah, it really does make a difference if you can choose to see the good that is in people and choose to see the good around you, it really does, I think, make a difference in the way that you see the world. And it doesn't matter who it is. Fred had this theory that once you got to know anyone's story, no matter who they were, that you could grow to love them if you could just hear their story, if you could just find out who they are. I've posted that quote actually on Twitter a number of times on the @MrRogersState account. And I always have people respond with, well, what about Hitler? What about Trump? Or what about whoever? You know, you can name whoever you think your villain is. But I really do think that Fred, again, he made this choice and he was so disciplined about the fact that he was going to hear your story and he was going to find the good in it. And I think part of that is, you know, an unwillingness to let that other person not be drawn back to the good, not be drawn back to the light, so to speak. But I think Fred really wanted to see all people in that good light.

Well, when we think about good, I'm wondering if you can help me figure this out, because since I learned that this was the topic, I've been wrestling with the tension between doing good and being good. So we all can think of an example of someone who we would think of as a bad person. I mean, you just mentioned that there's, you know, everyone has a list in their mind of who they think are bad people. But you have to admit that even when you have encountered a person that you think is bad or you've put in that category category, they still are capable of doing good things. Like, not every action that a person will do will be horrible. They will do a lot of things that we would consider to be good, even if we think of them as a not-good person. And that tension is very interesting to me, because, you know, we're so used to thinking of things in sort of Hollywood terms, where the bad guys always wear, you know, the black hats, and the good guys always wear the white hats, like the old cowboy movies. Life, real life is not like that. And one of the things that Fred Rogers did so well was he refused to think in those kind of simplified categories. But Rick, why do you, why do you think it is that we fall into that temptation so often to think about, uh, to think about things in that kind of simplified way?

I just tend to think that it's easier for us to see what's right before our face than it is to look deeper. And maybe that's too simple of an answer, but as I think about it I can look at what something appears to be on the surface and make a judgment pretty quickly as far as that goes. Or I can even take a person's actions, maybe how they've treated me or treated somebody else, and just write them off pretty easily. But again, it's a lot harder if you really look deeper into that person, into their life experiences, into the things that have made them who they are, and discover that there are certain choices that have been made along the way that maybe have led them down that path. And I just think it's really hard for us to see in more than one way. Again, you said it, Hollywood kind of sets it up for us, but even I think some of the great mythic tales that we have, it's always this story of good versus evil. We really struggle with the fact that as humans, none of us really are just one thing. And I do think that is true, that none of us are just one thing. If you're a gay person, you're not just a gay person. You have so So many different things that are so good about you and so many characteristics of your personality that make you you. You might love pizza and you might enjoy a certain type of film and none of those things, any more than we would say like a straight person, that you're straight, that is all that defines you. I don't know if that makes sense. I hope it is as I'm putting the words together, but none of us are just one thing. We really do have a lot of different layers to us, but I think all of us do have the capability to become good in our lives and to start doing good things based upon choices and actions and being led down those paths. Does that make sense at all?

It does. And since we're talking about Hollywood, another thing that I really like about Fred Rogers is how absolutely non-Hollywood he was. He refused to fall into the kind of expectations of television production that would demand things be rapid-fire and distracting and overwhelming. And he instead made the desire— he instead made clear his desire that things should be patient and slow and steady and predictable. And those kind of choices, you know, they're not bankable choices. He banked instead on something deeper, a deeper quality that would ring through. And that takes a lot of trust. It takes both the willingness to stick to your convictions, but also a trust that the convictions will eventually win out. And I think that when we look at the many, many, many fans and beloved watchers of Mr. Rogers who come back even as adults and speak so highly of the program, I think we see that quality winning out. But it's not always evident at the beginning that the— that goodness will— will be triumphant, is it?

No, no, it's not always evident. That's true.

Well, so how are we to maintain hope when we're in that moment of the temptation of wanting to do something bad because it feels pleasurable in the moment? How do we— and how do we maybe teach our children to hold out for that better thing, for the good thing? How do we teach our children to look for the good, Rick?

Well, If you could answer that, maybe you would answer the question of the ages. I don't know what it is as humans that tends to make us want those other choices at times. But I can say it maybe like this: although it might feel good for a moment to kind of jump on the bandwagon with a bunch of other people to put someone else down— let's say that there is a villain or someone that, especially on a place like Twitter where you know, one person gets vilified and piled upon again and again. Maybe they deserve it, maybe they don't. But I will say this, I think if you jump in on that, after a while it starts to give you a bad feeling, for sure. At least in maybe the way that if you've eaten too much of something that you love, eventually it will give you a stomachache and it'll start making you not feel so good and you don't want that thing anymore. I think that sometimes those things that will harm us and those things that are not good will kind of turn our appetite sour after a while. And I don't know if that's true, but I think sometimes there is a way to maybe teach some things to our children and instill that in them and help them understand it's a choice. But I think some of it is we have to go through some life experience too and discover that sometimes when we make the bad choice, it leads us to a bad place. And that just hurts. And maybe that will help us not make that decision again in the future. I am certainly no expert on parenting, and we're even going through some of that right now with my 6-year-old, trying to help him discover what would be the kindest choice and how to make those good decisions day after day. And it really is a struggle.

Well, Rick, I wonder if, if you could think about something that is good that is happening in your life right now that you'd want to share with our listeners.

Oh, something good.

You know what?

There are so many good things going on right now. I'm very blessed that I have a family that I love so much. I've already talked about my son and my wife. I have something very special in the future coming up with my music that has to do with radio that's coming up very soon. So those are some good things that are happening in my life. I consider my friendship with you very good. It's always so wonderful to be able to have these conversations together and to sort of have this mutual love. And I will have to say that— I'll cut myself off at this, I could go on for a few more things— but I just love the community that has grown on Twitter. I feel like it is such a good thing with that @MrRogersSay account because over this last weekend we grew to over 40,000 followers now. And it is always such a kind place and it is always such a wonderful spot if you feel like you need a place to go to, especially if you're online, to find encouragement. Not only are there the Fred Rogers quotes that I share, but people have been so kind in their responses to that and sharing those things with other people. And there have been things like where I'll post a quote about Fred telling us to stop for a moment and think about those people who have really influenced us for good in our lives. And I'll see things like people taking that post and tagging someone else in it and say, "This reminded me of you," or, "You are that person in my life." And so I am so grateful for for that, I consider that to be a very good thing, especially in a media that is often not so good, like Twitter.

That is wonderful, and I am also very thankful for my friendship with you and also for the opportunity to interact with the fans of the Mr. Rogers Say Twitter site and fans of this podcast. That's just a constant source of joy for me.

Well, David, this has been a really great pleasure, and I'm so glad we had the opportunity to do this again, and I'll look forward to next time when we get together. I can't I can't believe we're already 5 episodes in here at the Mr. Rogers podcast, the Welcome to the Neighborhood. And you can find out more about us listeners, by the way, if you go to welcomeneighbor.podbean.com or to fredrogerspodcast.com. But the show is not over. After we finish this conversation together, we have another part of our episode where we're going to take a deeper look at the goodness of Fred Rogers. So until next time, David Dahl, Well, thank you for stopping by for a visit.

Thank you so much, Rick. Talk to you soon.

Sometimes I like to look at the definition of words because so many times what a word actually means is not what most people think it means. Take the word bemused, for example. Many people think that the word bemused Bemused has the same meaning as the word amused. Strictly speaking, though, bemused and amused don't mean the same thing. Bemused actually means dazed, bewildered, or addled. But, if you amuse someone, you are making them laugh, or smile, or think something funny. Or, what about the distinction between the words flaunt or flout. Flaunting involves showing off. You can flout the rules, but you can't flaunt them. So, what did goodness mean to Fred Rogers? Did you ever notice how much he used the word good on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood or when he gave interviews? These are a few quotes from Fred where he would say things like, "It's such a good feeling to know you're alive," as he would sing week after week. Or he also said, "It's so important to find out what we feel good about doing. Try your best to make goodness attractive. That's one of the toughest assignments "you'll ever be given." Those are great quotes from Fred, and goodness was at the center of all that Fred Rogers did. Goodness might seem like a hard word to define in a culture such as ours that seems more often than not to be marked by division and skepticism. Sometimes goodness is used as an insult. Like when a person is called a goody-two-shoes or a goody-goody. Fred Rogers, however, did not believe goodness to be a disparaging term. For him, goodness was a deep respect for the dignity and value of all people. Goodness was a way of being in the world, a way of living life. For him, goodness meant living in such a way that your conscience was clean, a way that gave you a sense of pride in the work that you had done, living free of shame and guilt in a pure, wholesome, and morally rich place. Making goodness attractive was one of Fred Rogers' goals. In making Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. There is a lot of suffering in the world. That's just a part of life. Life is, in many ways, suffering. But it was important to Fred that we remember that suffering isn't all there is to life, and that even in suffering, there is still goodness to be found. Through his television neighborhood, He taught us that even in our greatest tragedies, there are opportunities to find the good. In the neighborhood, he showed us how to open our homes to others, how to make and share meals, how to donate our clothes, how to help others by mending the minds, bodies, and spirits of those who are suffering. How to do something helpful for others even when it only meant more work for you, and you seemingly didn't get anything in return for it. Well, he would tell us that that could give us such a good feeling. Well, goodness isn't just being nice. Goodness looks other human beings in the eyes and tells them, "You actually mean something." to me. Fred Rogers really was the embodiment of goodness and grace on television, a medium that doesn't always treat goodness and grace as something to be valued. Television is a medium made for acting. The people we mostly see on our screens are playing parts. They aren't being themselves. Very kind and very generous people in real life often portray villains and people of low morals on television. The opposite is also true. Sometimes people who play heroes on the screen are not such nice people in real life. Fred Rogers was unique in that he was not only Mr. Rogers on the television screen, but by all accounts, he was even more like that same Mr. Rogers in real life. He never had an acting class, and he assumed that it showed. He personified goodness on camera because goodness mattered to him. He cultivated goodness in his life. Author Tim Madigan writes about it in his wonderful book titled I'm Proud of You. On February 28, 2003, the day after Fred's death from stomach cancer at age 74, Madigan published an essay in the Star-Telegram describing his unlikely friendship with Fred Rogers. For the next several days, he was inundated with hundreds of letters emails, and telephone messages from newspaper readers eager to share their own memories of Mr. Rogers and the impact he and his long-running children's program had on their lives. Tim Madigan writes this in his book: Scores of young adults wrote of the sense of security they felt growing up with him, of learning from Mr. Rogers about their own value and what it meant to love. Parents wrote of entrusting their children to Mr. Rogers for a half hour each day, the kindly, wise, civilizing influence in a world increasingly bereft of kindness, wisdom, and civility. As I answered those messages, I was pleased to assure the readers that Fred Rogers and Mr. Rogers were indeed one and same, that in real life Fred was as he appeared on television, the gentle embodiment of goodness and grace. But I also told them that in my opinion, Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood revealed only a fraction of his human greatness. Knowing him from television alone, it was tempting to see him as a man who might actually live in his own neighborhood childhood of make-believe. A person of epic goodness, no doubt, but also a man of innocence and naïveté who, as a result, might be little acquainted with the grittier realities of life. It was that seeming innocence that made Mr. Rogers such an inviting target for satire. Fred once told me of surprising Eddie Murphy at his dressing room for Saturday Night Live, the comedy where Murphy repeatedly spoofed Fred in sketches called Mr. Robinson's Neighborhood. Eddie Murphy's television neighborhood was a raunchy place populated by slumlords, pimps, and prostitutes. Oh my God, Murphy cried when he saw Fred that day, the real Mr. Robinson! And of course The two hugged. There was innocence about Fred in person, to be sure. He could be quaint, such as when he referred to me as my dear. He was a vegetarian who would never eat anything that had a mother. He wore a goofy-looking swimming cap and goggles for his daily morning swims. He forever carried a camera, pulling it out with great delight to photograph people he had met for the first time. But he was also a man fully of this world, deeply aware of and engaged in its difficulties, speaking often of death, disease, divorce, addiction, and cruelty, and the agonies those things wrought on people he loved. End quote. Well, speaking for myself, Rick Lee James. I started the @MrRogersSay Twitter account in 2017 because I was very downhearted at the lack of goodness that I was seeing in the world. It was before the Won't You Be My Neighbor documentary was released. It was before there was talks of Tom Hanks playing Mr. Rogers on the big screen. It was just a time when everyone in our nation seemed so divided. There was talk of banning people from our country just because they belonged to a different religion. There were protests seemingly every day. There were lies being told from the top to the bottom of society. I was starting to lose my own self to cynicism and was harboring bad feelings about people people whom I had not even met, simply because there was so much animosity in the air. Thankfully, I was the father of a, at the time, 4-year-old, and with him I rediscovered a whole other alternative world where goodness reigned on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. I read every book I could find about Fred Rogers, and what kept compelling me again and again was the goodness that Fred chose to see in the world. He didn't just strive to see good in everyone, he made the choice that good would be seen, no matter who he was talking to, or what struggles he might have had with them. Fred just seemed determined not to use his celebrity to enter into the culture wars. He wouldn't endorse political parties, he absolutely I chose to share and to see goodness in the world with a determination that could not be stopped. There were times when I was not proud of myself, but it meant the world to me when I would watch the show with my son to hear Fred say in each episode how proud he was of me. He let me know that life didn't have to be good in order for me to get a good feeling. From doing the right thing. I am so grateful for the goodness that Fred Rogers saw in the world and the goodness that he put back out into the world, especially when it didn't always look or seem good. Let's listen to some of the goodness that Fred Rogers shared with us over the years.

Did you ever have anybody hurt your feelings? Did anyone ever say something to you that made you feel really small and not very lovable? That feels awful, doesn't it? But isn't it nice when somebody helps you feel good about who you are? I mean, if you look for it, you'll probably find something fine inside of everybody. Every one of us wants to know that we're a lovable person. We've just got that inside of us. And when we can know it for sure, it's such a good feeling. As you grow, I trust that you are finding many more ways to show and tell people that you love them. Those are the most important things that you'll ever learn to do, because loving people and animals and the world we all live in is the most important part of being alive. You always make each day such a special day. You know how? By just your being you. Only one person in this whole world like you. That's you yourself. I'll be back next time. Bye-bye.

This is one of my very favorite quotes from Fred Rogers: In the external scheme of things, shining moments are as brief as the twinkling of an eye. Yet such twinklings are what eternity is made of— moments when we human beings can say, I love you, I'm proud of you, I forgive you, I'm grateful for you. That's what eternity is made of: invisible, imperishable, good stuff. To find out more about the goodness of Mr. Rogers, I encourage you to pick up a copy of the book I'm Proud of You: My Friendship with Fred Rogers by Tim Madigan. There will be a link in our show notes @fredrogerspodcast.com. Thank you for joining us here this week in the neighborhood. Music featured on the podcast was Nouvelle Noel by Kevin MacLeod, and all other music by Benjamin Tauset at bensound.com. Special thanks to my guest David Dalt, and the Mr. Rogers Say community on Twitter @MrRogersSay. I'm your host, Rick Lee James. My Twitter account is @RickLeeJames. My website is rickleejames.com. My other podcast is Voices in My Head: The Rick Lee James Podcast. And I look forward to being with you again next time. Until we meet again, remember, you make each day such a special day. You know how? By just your being you. There's only one person in this whole world like you, and people can like you exactly as you are.