Times Were Tough and Mr. Rogers

Today was "Times Were Tough" day in my senior capstone class.

I assign three brief readings. The first is "Everything Is Awful and I'm Not OK: Questions to Ask Before Giving Up." (PDF Downloadable form here.) It's a one-page list of check-in questions, simple stuff like "Are you hydrated?" or "Have you moved your body to music in the past day?" These questions are paired with straightforward suggestions. "Drink a glass of water." "Find a living thing to cuddle." "Pause right now and get something small completed."

I share these with the caveat that the author isn't suggesting any of these cures depression or magically makes life better. But, I tell students, my sister the mental health counselor (the wisest person I know) could point them to people who would attest that they are alive today because they paused five minutes to drink a glass of water.

Putting a firewall between emotion and action is a big part of the second reading, a chapter from Kelly Williams Brown's Adulting: How to Become an Adult in 468 Easy(ish) Steps. The chapter is "Times Were Tough." Like a lot of Brown's book, the chapter combines practical how-to's (how to write a decent condolence note, how to share bad news) with some meta-level advice. A lot of it is a gentle lesson that the kind of things we experience as crises when we're in our late teens/early twenties turn out to be mere annoyances as we get older. The more we see and survive, the more perspective we have to separate emergencies from irritations.

One list she includes are physical health signs that qualify as medical emergencies, like a high fever, paralysis, or a seizure. I took the opportunity to add mental health emergencies. We spoke about the injustice of our cultures (and sometimes families) viewing mental health issues as somehow lesser than physical health issues.

There are differences, of course. My partner is fond of quipping that a symptom of having a broken leg is not denying that you have a broken leg. Many mental health dysfunctions, however, have as part of their awfulness minimizing or normalizing them. It's fine. It's not that big a deal. 

It doesn't help that, as my partner says, people tend to treat mental health as a matter of willpower rather than as an illness. No one tells diabetics to "just get over it" or "get right with the Lord" or "try smiling more." No, you give them insulin and other interventions.

The last reading, a new one for this class, is from Frank Ostaseksi's The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us about Living Fully. Ostaseksi founded a Zen Hospice in California. His book, a combination of anecdotes and wisdom teachings, can at first seem a bit like the worst kind of cliched self-help pablum. But then, just as you're thinking that, he hits you with a story of someone forgiving a mortal enemy on their deathbed. Or he tells about his story of surviving abuse at the hands of a trusted priest. Or he simply makes an observation that captures what you've always suspected.

The chapter I assigned was "Taming the Inner Critic." There Ostaseksi discusses how often the inner voice that hectors us is an unhelpful holdover from some previous (often childhood) experience. We can get awfully defensive of this critic, romanticizing it as the voice that keeps us on the straight and narrow. That defense, Ostaseski suggests, is often misguided. The inner voice more often than not isn't interested in wise discernment but in judgment, the quick and easy  castigation of all effort. It's a useful chapter for young artists (and middle-aged professors).

I end with Mr. Rogers. One of my favorite bits of musical theatre is this clip from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, where Daniel Striped Tiger and Lady Aberlin share a duet (a beautifully constructed one, I might add). Daniel worries that he's a mistake. Aberlin assures him he's not.

Notice how Aberlin's insistance doesn't diminish or banish Daniel's fears. They sing them together. But it helps.

I didn't show that in class (I know not everyone reveres Rogers as I do), but I did share the statement that Rogers ended every show with. First he sings:

It's such a good feeling
To know you're alive
It's such a happy feeling
You're growing inside
And when you wake up ready to say,
"I'll think I'll make a snappy new day."
It's such a good feeling
A very good feeling
A feeling you know 
That I'll be back
When the day is new
And I'll have more ideas for you
And you'll have things you'll want to talk about
I will, too.

Then he says:

You always make each day such a special day for me. You know how? By just your being you. There's no one else in the whole world like you, and people can like you just the way you are.

I tell my class that, locking eyes with each of them in turn. Some of them cry.

We never get over needing to hear that, I tell them. The people around you never get over needing to hear it, either. Only say it when you can mean it. But find ways to mean it and say it to the people in your life. 

It's a good Friday.

Private PS: Lord who loves us just the way we are, Lord who follows us into the darkest places of illness, be with EW and his family.

The Preconditions for Hope

Roundtable-planning for my proposal about the affective drives for performance continues apace. I've sent out invitations; I'm waiting on yeses or noes. Love and outrage are onboard. We'll see about joy, patriotism (or nostalgia), devotion, and whatever LF wants to do (if she says yes)/

And I'm delaying committing to hope or nihilism.

I should do hope. What gets me out of my doom spirals, I told my therapist yesterday, is teaching. When I'm teaching students, I cannot project pessimism and nihilism to them. I may loathe myself for my white male Americanness, but I cannot stand self-loathing in my students. It's Fred Rogers all the way: There's no one else in the whole world like you, and you are capable of loving and being loved just as you are.

There are few things I hold for certain. When I say that Rogers message to students, though, I deliver it with as much certainty and conviction as I can muster. There's no room for hedging. There's no room for doubt or exceptions.

I once asked my sister (wisest person I know, mental health counselor) about the ethics of assuring small children that everything's going to be all right. It's literally not true. She allowed that, of course, bad things happen to everyone, children included. Of course, telling children that nothing unpleasant will ever touch them their whole life long would be a recipe for dysfunction. But when a parent tells a frightened child that they'll be OK--most of the time--it's not a literal prediction of the future. It's a promise: I love you. I am with you. I will do my best to stay with you and protect you.

She reminded me of a snippet from Won't You Be My Neighbor (the excellent documentary on Mr. Rogers). Mr. Rogers (very young in this clip) tells of one of his first encounters with a group of small children. One of the kids shows him a stuffed animal, telling him that its arm came off in the wash. This was a test, Mr. Rogers reflected. They waited to see how Mr. Rogers would respond. Would he swoop in and save them from their fear? (But your mommy fixed it, didn't she? It's all better now!) Instead, he asked a question: Our arms don't fall off when we wash them, do they? The kids, delighted that someone pinpointed their real fears here, responded enthusiastically.

The point, my sister said, isn't the factual status of Mr. Rogers's statement. Sometimes, indeed, children do lose limbs. But what the kids are asking isn't Do bad things ever happen? but Can I trust you to love me? Children need a foundation of trust and consistent care in order to thrive.

So do my students need something other than the yawning nihilism of my own pathologies. They have troubles aplenty. They're stressed, busy, going into debt, and terrified of the future. They're struggling to discover who they are apart from the family patterns they've learned throughout their childhood.

They aren't children. They know bad things happen. But they can all use a bit of Mr. Rogers certainty, the thing that is true by virtue of its affirmation: You are precious. You are loved. You can love just as you are.

There's a hope in that, or at least the preconditions for hope.