I am reading a book that was a Christmas gift, called “The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember” by Fred Rogers. Yes, the Mister Rogers that many of us grew up with. This book was published in 2003, which is also the year that he passed away. There is a whole section titled The Courage to be Yourself. One of the paragraphs goes like this:
“The values we care about the deepest, and the movements within society that support those values, command our love. When those things that we care about so deeply become endangered, we become enraged. And what a healthy thing that is! Without it, we would never stand up and speak out for what we believe.”
This seems to hold true now as much as it ever has, and always will. It is a strange feeling, my dearly beloved childhood friend, Mister Rogers, giving me permission to become enraged and to speak out. But he is right on the money. For some of us, only because of that feeling of our values having been violated might we have the courage to stand up and speak our truth.
There are many more gems in his book and I’m finding myself surprised and intrigued.
No Comments