Marty and I just finished watching A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, where Tom Hanks stars as Fred Rogers. (If you don’t know who Mr. Rogers is, Google him. He’s an American icon.) In the movie, Mr. Rogers is being interviewed by a reporter for Esquire magazine named Lloyd Vogel, a man who had a very difficult childhood and hasn’t processed things well, to make a long story short. At first, he is convinced that Mr. Rogers can’t possibly be the person that he portrays on television, but slowly learns that he truly does care about people and their feelings, children especially. He also learns that while Mr. Rogers isn’t a “saint”, he continually works on ways to express his negative emotions in a healthy way. Through the film, Lloyd is able to resolve his anger.
There’s a lot more to the movie than that, but I took that message to heart. There are so many ways that I can change my reaction to things to be a better person. I don’t have to make the comment I feel like making, I can stop and think more before I react to someone or somebody. Just last night, I could have responded in a better way to someone online. I didn’t insult the person, someone who gets under my skin and deliberately baits me from time to time, but I definitely could have done a better job with what I did say. I was defensive, which doesn’t work and just makes a person look desperate. Mr. Rogers would have known how to respond in a loving way, not in a defensive way.
A few weeks ago, Marty and I got into an argument because I overreacted to something he said. I can see it now, in hindsight, and I own it but I’m still upset with myself that I didn’t handle it well. It upsets me that I wasn’t a terribly patient mom when my boys were growing up. That’s a big regret. I know that after ten years, I’m not a terribly patient teacher when it comes to behavior, especially with I’m faced with deliberate defiance and blatant disrespect. Mr. Rogers (Tom Hanks, actually) just reminded me that I can choose how I handle my anger and frustration instead of taking the easy way out and unleashing those negative emotions on someone else.
Do some people deserve our anger? Sure. I don’t think Mr. Rogers’ message was that we shouldn’t be angry, or that being angry wasn’t healthy, but not to be destructive in our anger. I still need to work on that lesson. I have a lot of things to be angry about, a lot of unresolved issues, especially from my childhood, but I can choose my response to that. I can be kinder, I can be more understanding about what someone is is feeling or going through. It’s really, really, hard sometimes because we want to hurt the person who hurt us, or put them in their place, but what does that achieve?
Something to think about.
A Place of My Own 