The Whole Story

In yesterday's New York Times Magazine, Sarah Silverman said that Mr. Rogers said, "There's nobody you couldn't love if you knew their whole story." That just rang me like a bell, all the way to the (froze) toes and back up the stiffening spine.

In the first place, Fred Rogers was a latter day saint, in the absolute best sense of that phrase. There was an article on him years ago (November 1998, you should find it and read it) in Esquire by Tom Junod, one of that magazine's stable of smart (even smart ass), savvy, macho-yet-sensitive contributors. In his extended interview with Fred Rogers, Junod reports, he just about found God. I think his original intent was to do a number on Mr. Rogers, take the cheap and easy route, score some points on the scale of snide and superior; what actually happened was that Mr. Rogers did quite a number on Junod. He touched his heart, and Junod was man enough to say so, and say how it happened, and how he's never forgotten it. In fact, his present Esquire bio, 9 years later, remarks on that transforming encounter with Mr. Rogers.

For all the people who claim to serve on behalf of The Children, there was only one of them like Fred Rogers, and he did it with such force, intelligence and extraordinary compassion (hard to find those three attributes all in the same person, yes?), that he actually did a lot of people a lot of good in his time. For that, he should be beatified, knighted, given the goddamned Medal of Honor. THAT'S how I feel about Mr. Rogers.

The fact that Sarah Silverman picked up on this seminal statement of his makes me think a lot better of HER, even if she IS married or at least joined at the hip with Jimmy Kimmel. (Okay, I'll give him a break, too -- he's only a degree away from Mr. Rogers as it is. If I knew his whole story, I'd love him. Probably. Mr. Rogers was never wrong.)

I digress: the point is this Whole Story business. I'm not sure we can know ANYBODY'S whole story; if we should do so, we will have been blessed with a gift beyond measure. We can't even know the whole story of a rescued dog, for heaven's sake; how could we go on to that of a complicated human being? Or even that of a not-very-complicated, seemingly irredeemably simple, STUPID human being? I like to think that I pretty much give people the benefit of the doubt; at the same time I'm apt not to invite too many of them into my private sphere/self, to the extent that any of them could know me well enough to be able to find, much less step on, any of my pet corns. If they find them and step on them by accident, well, c'est la vie; damned if I'll let them KNOW that they have done so -- I'll just take a long hike and never have anything to do with them again.

That's pretty harsh. Yet MY whole story includes all of those corns, how I got them, what I'll do to protect them, the lengths to which I'll go in order to hide them, how cruel I can be in my own defense. This is a faith question, I think, and part of the issue of how and when to love, and with whom to start. If we can't really know anybody's whole story, if the best we can do is to learn and accept our OWN whole stories, pet corns and all, then we have to love, hard and well, our OWN Se'fs (as they say in Junod's Atlanta), and then progress to loving everybody else. EVERYBODY else.

Trust isn't an issue -- we can't trust anybody to be anything but themselves, and we can without any question whatsoever trust everyone to be himself, one hundred percent, and trust that they will do whatever they must do to protect against perceived threat.

We don't have to LIKE everybody; that's a completely different thing. There are plenty of people whose Se'fs are unpleasant, or violent, or hostile, etc., and we don't have to buy them a beer. We just have to love them, which is the same thing as to accept them, which is what anybody deserves, just by the fact of being alive and therefore having an effect upon the earth.

Surely, we our own Se'fs deserve the same kind of acceptance as the rescued dog, for example; the parts of our own story that we DO know and acknowledge are often rough, painful, more than enough to forgive if they were part of that dog's story. If he bites, or snarls over his food bowl, or cowers or runs away if someone approaches with a raised hand, we forgive -- we correct, and retrain, and rehabilitate if we possibly can, but first we forgive. When I am at my most self-deprecating, when I loathe myself with the greatest depth and conviction, I try really hard to think of myself as a fractious two-year-old child, or even as a pup whose history is not known but guessed to be abusive, and I can give myself a break.

Sometimes I'm so cross at myself that I can't even do that much, and I find the snapping and snubbing and tantrum-throwing not very comforting, and yet they're almost unstoppable. When I'm behaving so abominably, I pray fervently (if under my breath) for forgiveness from my closest friends and relations, and while I usually get the forgiveness, I don't FEEL it until I've comforted my own Se’f a little bit, till I've poured a little emotional honey over my own head, till I've curled up with my down blanket and hiccupped myself to sleep.

That's when I feel my mother's hand on my forehead, stroking my hair back from my face, her other hand pat-patting my back, her voice humming quietly.

My whole story includes that of my mother; it's one of the things that make me forgivable.