Lessons from childhood

Exactly 12 years ago on this day, Feb. 27 2003, the earth lost a human being who could never be replaced. His name was Fred McFeely Rogers, but children around the world knew him simply as Mister Rogers—the soft-spoken, kind-hearted man on TV who lived around the corner of the neighborhood and greeted us every morning with a song and a smile. Clad in one of his iconic, hand-knit cardigans, he’d sit down on his bench and speak to us openly and unassumingly, as if we were guests in his living room. In a time when children’s media was offering little but slapstick humor and casual violence, Mister Rogers revitalized educational programming by creating a safe space for wholesome conversation and teaching. The Neighborhood was an intimate community where children and adults alike were welcome to listen, live and learn without fear or judgment.

For me, what made Mister Rogers truly special was the genuine way he merged wonder with reality. We’re often taught to compromise one or the other—that as we grow up, we must sacrifice curiosity for practicality to succeed in life. Mister Rogers didn’t recognize this binary. He found joy in the simplicity of children but also trusted his young viewers enough to speak honestly about sad things in the world. In his mind there was always good to be found in the bad, and he believed in little miracles that animated an otherwise stagnant life. In the words of Tom Junod, the man lived in a constant state of astonishment—amazed by the people he met, astounded by the beauty of the earth, awestruck upon seeing all there was out there to learn.

But it’s not the children who need Mister Rogers—it’s the grown-ups. It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick—the ones who’ve lived long enough to know the pain of loss and the destructive potential of humankind. Once fascinated but now devastated by the world, many adults now live in the shattered fragments of a forgotten, idealistic past. They’ve become estranged from their childhood Neighborhoods, and to them the World of Make-Believe has become the mere figment of a forgotten dream.

When we think about it, there’s a chance that the tragedies plaguing our “grown-up” society would be reconciled if all of us just embraced some of the lessons we learned as children. Issues such as racial reconciliation, gender violence, unequal wealth distribution, and collective action failure may appear overwhelmingly complex, but at their core, they are simpler than we think. All of them trace their roots to human actions that remain ultimately within our own control. We have no one to blame but ourselves for being the flawed, self-interested human beings we are.

“Listen before you speak. Share with others. Actions speak louder than words. Everyone is special in a different way.” Within these childhood adages lie the keys to restoring our faith in the broken world around us. As kids, many of us were taught to share what we had so that everyone at the table could enjoy equal access to the crayons or the snacks or whatever else we were given. Yet, as we advanced in years, such narratives submitted slowly to new dictums concerned more with personal accomplishments than with altruism.

Speak loudly or you won’t be heard. Keep and enjoy what you’ve earned for yourself. Don’t sacrifice for the greater good if it means losing benefits. People who earn more money are more special than those who earn less. Since when did our morals change just because we made the arbitrary transition from child to adult? Why is being vulnerable about our struggles suddenly considered a liability, and why is showing generosity to others in the workplace often evaluated as an irrational course of action?

Sometimes I think we overestimate the wisdom that comes with age. As we grow in years, we lose just as much as we appear to gain. In exchange for expanded rational thinking and more complex cognitive functions, we sacrifice the uninhibited creativity, curiosity, and innocence that once made our young minds so precious. Moreover, the astounding plasticity of neural networks in children’s brains allows them to absorb new knowledge at a rate that an adult could never hope to match. An unadulterated sense of wonder about the world and the ability to quickly engender new ideas—these qualities are exactly what grown-ups come to neglect as they leave their years of childhood behind.

So how can we recover the remnants of the romantic imaginations we used to have? I believe we can start by revisiting some stories from our childhood and searching for the subtler narratives that might not have seemed relevant to us as kids. In the tale of Mary Poppins, a nanny arrives in London to rescue two young children from their boring chores and take them on a series of magical adventures. At least, that’s how a six-year-old might see it. But in the eyes of a grown-up, it’s not the children whom Mary has come to save. It’s their father—the one who has neglected to spend time with his family and forgotten simply how to admire the world, for the sake of money, order and prestige.