Artist Date: Mister Rogers and Me

June 3, 2024

I have a growing obsession with Mister Rogers that started last summer. I never watched much of him when I was a kid; the show was too slow moving for me, and I wasn’t a prolific TV-watcher to begin with.

But last summer, I was tasked by my principal to lead a discussion with colleagues of the book, When You Wonder, You’re Learning: Mister Rogers’ Enduring Lessons for Raising Creative, Curious, Caring Kids. Less applicable to those who work with adolescents, I learned more about parenting my 6-year-old than anything else: To create a thriving adult, I learned the importance of modeling and providing opportunities for passion, curiosity, and creativity for my daughter.

When I next watched the 2018 documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor, I became taken with the psychological safety Rogers was able to cultivate for millions of children through a screen, of all things. I began to wonder if my daughter, who has ADHD, would be able to sit through the slow-moving episodes and feel validated and affirmed by him. Maybe time with Mister Rogers would help her to become more aware of ways to manage her big emotions, for “anything mentionable is manageable.”

So I checked out The Kindness Collection from our library, and we began to watch one episode together every morning. A miraculous thing started to happen. Yes, my daughter was engaged. She enjoyed his field trips to factories and the stories in the Land of Make Believe. But our time with Mister Rogers had a much greater impact on me.

I noticed myself looking forward to our morning ritual from an old place of longing. “It’s you I like,” spoken into the camera — seeing, affirming, validating my inner child — called up my big feelings. From where did this guy get such power?

So when I saw last month that a local film-maker was screening his documentary Friends and Neighbors at the indie film house in town, I found my May Artist Date.

While Benjamin Wagner’s documentary explores the current American mental health crisis through the lens of his own PTSD, he also finds the helpers — the friends and neighbors in our community of Wilmington, DE, whose work intersect with the field of mental health — and incorporates their stories into the film. Wagner, I learned, took inspiration after this Mister Rogers notion: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

In the talk-back with Wagner afterwards, I learned of his 2012 documentary, Mister Rogers and Me. So my May Artist date has a Part 2 (streaming for free on Amazon Prime).

In Mister Rogers and Me, Wagner reveals that Rogers was his actual neighbor on Nantucket. When Wagner met him on his 30^th birthday, Rogers invited Wagner over to his Crooked House, and the ensuing conversation changed Wagner forever. Rogers insisted that “deep and simple is far more essential than shallow and complex” and “to spread the message.”

Both Wagners’ documentaries explore this “deep and simple” idea. And both artfully explore the concept of a neighborhood in spreading that message. While Wagner interviewed his friends and neighbors in Friends and Neighbors, he interviewed Mister Rogers’ neighbors in Mister Rogers and Me. He sought out others who were doing similar work to Rogers, and incorporated the stories of their symbiotic relationships of inspiration.

One such “neighbor” that particularly intrigued me was Bo Lozoff, who founded the Human Kindness Foundation. He wrote a book called Deep and Simple: A Spiritual Path for Modern Times. Mister Rogers, over his lifetime, bought multiple copies of Lozoff’s books and would gift them to friends and neighbors. It turns out that Rogers’ “deep and simple” advice to Wagner came from Lozoff who believed that “the cause of our problems” is that “human life is very deep, and our dominant modern lifestyle is not.”

In the film, Lozoff spoke of the “crushing pace” of modern life, and its focus on “stuff”: We want stuff, buy stuff, replace stuff, repair stuff, protect stuff, defend stuff. “It’s anti-life,” he said.

Lozoff also mentioned that if we allow three types of things to touch us daily, even if only for a few seconds, we would live rich lives. The beautiful, the noble, and the sacred.

Even though one of Mister Rogers’ “friends and neighbors” called him a “miraculous” individual, Wagners’ documentaries didn’t make his lifework seem impossible to replicate for us common folk. From where does this guy get such power? From a community of friends and neighbors. Those we place on pedestals are not alone up there.

And that’s the beauty of Wagners’ films. Both touch on the act of cultivating a community of friends and neighbors, near and far, who share similar deep and simple work. I felt called to my own deep and simple: connection to humans and nature, to beauty and creativity. And I felt called to pull close those who share my values.

I also felt a tremendous sense of loss when Mister Rogers and Me covered Rogers’ death. The world has become even more shallow and complex since his passing in 2003. Who are the 2024 Mister Rogers? Who are the current leaders of deep and simple, that can be our beacons?