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kagekachouExcerpts from the book The World According to Mister Rogers.
Some days, doing "the best we can" may still fall short of what we would like to be able to do, but life isn't perfect -- on any front -- and doing what we can with what we have is the most we should expect of ourselves or anyone else.
From the song "The Truth Will Make Me Free":
There's no "should" or "should not" when it comes to having feelings. They're part of who we are and their origins are beyond our control. When we can believe that, we may find it easier to make constructive choices about what to do with those feelings.
All our lives, we rework the things from our childhood, like feeling good about ourselves, managing our angry feelings, being able to say good-bye to people we love.
Often when you think you're at the end of something, you're at the beginning of something else. I've felt that many times. My hope for all of us is that "the miles we go before we sleep" will be filled with all the feelings that come from deep caring -- delight, sadness, joy, wisdom -- and that in all the endings of our life, we will be able to see the new beginnings.
From the song "The Clown in Me":
Understanding love is one of the hardest things in the world.
Deep within us -- no matter who we are -- there lives a feeling of wanting to be lovable, of wanting to be the kind of person that others like to be with. And the greatest thing we can do is to let people know that they are loved and capable of loving.
Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.
It's the people we love the most who can make us feel the gladdest . . . and the maddest! Love and anger are such a puzzle! It's hard for us, as adults, to understand and manage our angry feelings toward parents, spouses, and children, or to keep their anger toward us in perspective. It's a different kind of anger from the kind we may feel toward strangers because it is so deeply intertwined with caring and attachment.
People have said, "Don't cry" to other people for years and years, and all it has ever meant is, "I'm too uncomfortable when you show your feelings. Don't cry." I'd rather have them say, "Go ahead and cry. I'm here to be with you."
Love and trust, in the space between what's said and what's heard in our life, can make all the difference in this world.
There's something unique about being a member of a family that really needs you in order to function well. One of the deepest longings a person can have is to feel needed and essential.
Forgiveness is a strange thing. It can sometimes be easier to forgive our enemies than our friends. It can be hardest of all to forgive people we love. Like all of life's important coping skills, the ability to forgive and the capacity to let go of resentments most likely take root very early in our lives.
Mutually caring relationships require kindness and patience, tolerance, optimism, joy in the other's achievements, confidence in oneself, and theability to give without undue thought of gain. We need to accept the fact that it's not in the power of any human being to provide all of these things all the time. For any of us, mutually caring relationships will also always include some measure of unkindness and impatience, intolerance, pessimism, envy, self-doubt, and disappointment.
In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with out ears and our hearts and to be assured that out questions are just as important as our answers.
One of the strongest things we have to wrestle with in our lives is the significance of the longing for perfection in ourselves and in the people bound to us by friendship or parenthood or childhood.
The greatest gift you ever give is your honest self.
I believe that infants and babies whose mothers give them loving comfort whenever and however they can are truly the fortunate ones. I think they're more likely to find life's times of trouble manageable, and I think they may also turn out to be the adults most able to pass loving concern along to the generations that follow after them.
You bring all you ever were and are to any relationship you have today.
We need to help people to discover the true meaning of love. Love is generally confused with dependence. Those of us who have grown in true love know that we can love only in proportion to our capacity for independence.
Children who have learned to be comfortably dependent can become not only comfortably independent, but can also become comfortable with having people depend on them. They can lean, or stand and be leaned upon, because they know what a good feeling it can be to feel needed.
When we love a person, we accept him or her exactly as is: the lovely with the unlovely, the strong along with the fearful, the true mixed in with the facade, and of course, the only way we can do it is by accepting ourselves that way.
When we resign ourselves to the wishes that will never come true, there can be enormous energies available within us for whatever we can do.
One of the greatest paradoxes about omnipotence is that we need to feel it early in life, and lose it early in life, in order to achieve a healthy, realistic yet exciting, sense of potency later on.
There is no normal life that is free of pain. It's the very wrestling with our problems that can be the impetus for our growth.
The great poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: "Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart, and learn to love the questions themselves."
It's true that we take a great deal of our own upbringing on into our adult lives and our lives as parents; but it's true, too, that we can change some of the things that we would like to change. It can be hard, but it can be done.
If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.
Whether we're a preschooler or a young teen, a graduating college senior or a retired person, we human beings all want to know that we're acceptable, that our being alive somehow makes a difference in the lives of others.
Some days, doing "the best we can" may still fall short of what we would like to be able to do, but life isn't perfect -- on any front -- and doing what we can with what we have is the most we should expect of ourselves or anyone else.
From the song "The Truth Will Make Me Free":
What is I were very, very sad
And all I did was smile?
I wonder after awhile
What might become of my sadness?
What if I were very, very angry
And all I did was sit
And never think about it?
What might become of my anger?
Where would they go,
And what would they do,
If I couldn't let them out?
Maybe I'd fall, maybe get sick,
Or doubt.
But what if I could know the turth
And say just how I feel?
I think I'd learn a lot that's real
About freedom.
There's no "should" or "should not" when it comes to having feelings. They're part of who we are and their origins are beyond our control. When we can believe that, we may find it easier to make constructive choices about what to do with those feelings.
All our lives, we rework the things from our childhood, like feeling good about ourselves, managing our angry feelings, being able to say good-bye to people we love.
Often when you think you're at the end of something, you're at the beginning of something else. I've felt that many times. My hope for all of us is that "the miles we go before we sleep" will be filled with all the feelings that come from deep caring -- delight, sadness, joy, wisdom -- and that in all the endings of our life, we will be able to see the new beginnings.
From the song "The Clown in Me":
Sometimes I feel when I'm afraid
That I will never make the grade
So I pretend I'm somone else
And show the world my other self.
I'm not quite sure of me, you see
When I have to make a clown of me.
A clown, a clown
I think I'll be a clown.
I think I'll make the people laugh
And laugh all over town. A clown,
That's what I'll be, a clown.
Sometimes I feel all good inside
And haven't got a thing to hide.
My friends all tell me I'm the best;
They think I'm better than the rest.
It's times like these I act myself
And I let the clown stay on the shelf.
Myself, myself
I think I'll be myself.
I think I'll let the people see
That I'm comfortable inside of me.
Myself, I'll be myself.
It's only when I feel let down
I might be scared into a clown.
But, he can be himself
When I can be myself, myself.
I think I'll be myself.
Understanding love is one of the hardest things in the world.
Deep within us -- no matter who we are -- there lives a feeling of wanting to be lovable, of wanting to be the kind of person that others like to be with. And the greatest thing we can do is to let people know that they are loved and capable of loving.
Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.
It's the people we love the most who can make us feel the gladdest . . . and the maddest! Love and anger are such a puzzle! It's hard for us, as adults, to understand and manage our angry feelings toward parents, spouses, and children, or to keep their anger toward us in perspective. It's a different kind of anger from the kind we may feel toward strangers because it is so deeply intertwined with caring and attachment.
People have said, "Don't cry" to other people for years and years, and all it has ever meant is, "I'm too uncomfortable when you show your feelings. Don't cry." I'd rather have them say, "Go ahead and cry. I'm here to be with you."
Love and trust, in the space between what's said and what's heard in our life, can make all the difference in this world.
There's something unique about being a member of a family that really needs you in order to function well. One of the deepest longings a person can have is to feel needed and essential.
Forgiveness is a strange thing. It can sometimes be easier to forgive our enemies than our friends. It can be hardest of all to forgive people we love. Like all of life's important coping skills, the ability to forgive and the capacity to let go of resentments most likely take root very early in our lives.
Mutually caring relationships require kindness and patience, tolerance, optimism, joy in the other's achievements, confidence in oneself, and theability to give without undue thought of gain. We need to accept the fact that it's not in the power of any human being to provide all of these things all the time. For any of us, mutually caring relationships will also always include some measure of unkindness and impatience, intolerance, pessimism, envy, self-doubt, and disappointment.
In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with out ears and our hearts and to be assured that out questions are just as important as our answers.
One of the strongest things we have to wrestle with in our lives is the significance of the longing for perfection in ourselves and in the people bound to us by friendship or parenthood or childhood.
The greatest gift you ever give is your honest self.
I believe that infants and babies whose mothers give them loving comfort whenever and however they can are truly the fortunate ones. I think they're more likely to find life's times of trouble manageable, and I think they may also turn out to be the adults most able to pass loving concern along to the generations that follow after them.
You bring all you ever were and are to any relationship you have today.
We need to help people to discover the true meaning of love. Love is generally confused with dependence. Those of us who have grown in true love know that we can love only in proportion to our capacity for independence.
Children who have learned to be comfortably dependent can become not only comfortably independent, but can also become comfortable with having people depend on them. They can lean, or stand and be leaned upon, because they know what a good feeling it can be to feel needed.
When we love a person, we accept him or her exactly as is: the lovely with the unlovely, the strong along with the fearful, the true mixed in with the facade, and of course, the only way we can do it is by accepting ourselves that way.
When we resign ourselves to the wishes that will never come true, there can be enormous energies available within us for whatever we can do.
One of the greatest paradoxes about omnipotence is that we need to feel it early in life, and lose it early in life, in order to achieve a healthy, realistic yet exciting, sense of potency later on.
There is no normal life that is free of pain. It's the very wrestling with our problems that can be the impetus for our growth.
The great poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: "Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart, and learn to love the questions themselves."
It's true that we take a great deal of our own upbringing on into our adult lives and our lives as parents; but it's true, too, that we can change some of the things that we would like to change. It can be hard, but it can be done.
If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.
Whether we're a preschooler or a young teen, a graduating college senior or a retired person, we human beings all want to know that we're acceptable, that our being alive somehow makes a difference in the lives of others.
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Date: 2007-01-31 05:17 am (UTC)