Fred Rogers
We saw the movie "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" last night so, of course, you get a Mr Rogers quote today. I've been anticipating this movie since I sent a Mr. Rogers quote earlier this year. I am adding this to my favourite movies of all time list to be watched during the Christmas season. Why "favourite" and why "Christmas" are encapsulated in the above quote. Adding "to love ourselves" exactly as we are and "to love our world" exactly as it is to the concept "to love someone" completes the picture of the epic struggle between love as challenging us to love the way we want to be loved and our expectations of perfection in what we love.
Christmas is when I have less demands on my time, but in the dark evenings I spend alone I can feel really alone and sometimes I decide to look at my unlovable-ness, because if I was loved someone would want to be with me. Doesn't make sense, but serves a purpose because that's when I explore the world and myself.
Those evenings I spend reading, listening to music and thinking. Maybe for a bit I'll cry about being alone; then I'll hear my mother's voice telling me to get over myself (which I didn't appreciate hearing when I was a teen) but now makes me laugh and feel blessed to have been loved unconditionally by a wise, beautiful, strong woman. I love these evenings because she feels so close. Sometimes I dance because music takes me somewhere to another emotional experience. Sometimes everything seems so hopeless, the world seems to have given up on love and gotten stuck in patterns of competition, greed, cruelty, pain, and hunger and to have buried a deep and unconscious need for love in looking for substitute value in a material world. Broken people and places around the globe that are stuck in patterns of hate because it is hard work to love broken things and it is hardest to love ourselves in our own brokenness.
Those are the times I watch one of my Christmas movies like "Love Actually". It is a movie about many kinds of love, loneliness, struggle and forgiveness... and illustrates that love is not easy and people can't help but be who they are and every single one of them is lovable and has the capacity for loving others beyond what they seem to be and do. (and because it makes me laugh and cry)
"A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood" made me cry, remember the child I was, remember the times when everything in my world seemed fragmented and a common experience brought people together in a few minutes of shared consciousness. There's a couple links below about the story and the movie ...
There is something magical about these movies that make people believe in love, at least for a little while, and that is the Christmas season to me.
Thank you to all the inspiring people and movies and songs that help us believe in love.
Cheers
Jeanne
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