Last night, this blogger and author had the privilege to attend the documentary–“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”–about the life and career of Fred Rogers, known as Mr. Rogers on PBS for over thirty years, on his show “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood”.
Fred Rogers was a beautiful human being, who promoted good self image among children, emphasizing how each of us is unique and special.
He promoted love, compassion, empathy, and tolerance on issues of race, religion, sexuality, gender, and disabilities.
He made the lives of innumerable children, now adults, far better than they might have been without his show on PBS.
He helped children through the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968; the Challenger Astronaut Disaster of 1986; and the evil of September 11.
He promoted people accepting each other as they are, and looking for the good in people.
His show, through puppets and supporting cast, made children and their parents happier and more secure than they would have been otherwise.
In a time as now, in 2018, we so desperately need a Mr. Rogers to overcome the horrible sins of hatred, greed, selfishness, racism, nativism, misogyny, Islamophobia, antisemitism, prejudice against the disabled, and the poor of all backgrounds, represented by the total evil of Donald Trump and his supporting cast and base.
We need a political leader who will come to the forefront and overcome the cancer and absolute evil of Donald Trump, and take us in a different direction.
It was hard to watch this documentary and not have tears and despair, but there are other Fred Rogers out there, maybe not yet showing up in government, but playing their smaller roles as teachers, nurses, doctors, social workers, and others dedicated to making life better for all of us, not just the elite wealthy who could not give a damn about anyone but themselves!
Tom Hanks will portray Fred Rogers in a film to come out in 2019, entitled “You Are My Friend”.
We’ve been watching CNN’s decades programs. Latest is about the 2000s. First episode was about TV of the 2000s. The 2000s ushered in reality shows, many of which show people using rude and crude behavior.
A Lesson From Twelve Boys Trapped in a Cave and Their Coach
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/07/10/a-lesson-from-twelve-boys-trapped-in-a-cave-and-their-coach/#.W0TyxK-TXAM.facebook
There are a lot of big political stories unfolding right now, but I would venture to say that nothing is being watched more closely, both here in the United States and around the world, than this one:
The last remaining member of the Wild Boars soccer team and their coach have been pulled out of a flooded cave in Thailand, bringing an end to a near three-week ordeal that prompted an international rescue effort that captivated audiences around the world.
The twelfth boy and his coach were the last of the team to be rescued Tuesday, after a complicated three-day operation to extricate the team, who became trapped on June 23 when rising flood water cut them off deep inside the cave.
In the last 18 days, what began as a local search for the missing 13 turned into a complex rescue operation, involving hundreds of experts who flew in from around the world to help.
In a world filled with grim news, the global collaboration that resulted in the rescue of these boys speaks to the better angels in our nature and is truly something to celebrate.
As I heard stories about the way these boys were trapped in a dark cave, I tried to imagine how they were handling the situation for over two weeks. Then today I read this:
When the 12 Thai boys who were trapped in a cave and were rescued one by one were first discovered by British divers a week ago, they were reportedly meditating.
“Look at how calm they were sitting there waiting. No one was crying or anything. It was astonishing,†the mother of one of the boys told the AP, referring to a widely shared videoof the moment the boys were found.
Turns out that their coach, Ekapol Chanthawong, who led them on a hike into the cave when it flooded on June 23, trained in meditation as a Buddhist monk for a decade before becoming a soccer coach. According to multiple news sources, he taught the boys, ages 11 to 16, to meditate in the cave to keep them calm and preserve their energy through their two-week ordeal.
Apparently Ekapol went to live in a Buddhist monastery when he was orphaned at the age of 12 and lived there for 10 years until he left to take care of his grandmother. What a gift he brought with him to this ordeal!
After reviewing the limited research on the effects of meditation, Eliza Barclay writes this:
As Brother Phap Dung, a senior disciple of the Zen Buddhist master and author Thich Nhat Hanh, told me in a 2016 interview: In meditation, “you’re cultivating [peace, kindness, clarity] so you can offer it to others. When you sit with someone who’s calm, you can become calm. If you sit with someone who’s agitated and hateful, you can become agitated and hateful.â€
Not to take anything away from the ordeal these boys have been through, but that advice strikes me as something we could all take to heart. Phap Dung is actually saying that emotional states are contagious. When you sit with someone who is feeling agitated and hateful, you start feeling agitated and hateful.
The current president of the United States and many in his administration are attempting to make agitation and hatefulness contagious. If you doubt that, simply watch one of Trump’s campaign rallies, either recently or during the campaign. When those kinds of feelings spread, they win because it is their key to chaos, dominance, and authoritarianism.
Simply reading Barclay’s piece about what Ekapol taught those young boys, I found myself taking a deep breath as I felt the peace and clarity he was spreading around. Even via words on a screen, it was contagious. Now I hope to spread it even further.
Lest anyone get worried, having a sense of peace and clarity does not make one weak or inactive. Based on what I’ve heard about what it took to get these 12 boys out of the cave, the calmness very likely helped them conserve their strength and energy for the ordeal they were about to face. On the other hand, anxiety and hate simply waste resources on useless endeavors.
In addition to celebrating the rescue of these boys and their coach, we could all learn something from how they managed to cope with being trapped in a cave for over two weeks.