◆The Barbaric Yawp Project

Won't You Be My Neighbor? I'd like to talk with you today about feelings. Not the easy ones. The hard ones. The ones that make you want to hurt someone so you don't have to feel them. The ones that make you want to find someone smaller and remind them how small they are. The ones that make you want to stand in front of a crowd and be told you are enough. There is no person in the whole world like you. And I like you just the way you are. The man who needs a crowd to tell him he is enough was not told that as a child. I am not excusing him. I am diagnosing him. The child who is not told he is worthy learns to perform. To dominate. To make others feel small because smallness in others is the only substitute for feeling large oneself. That child grows up. And if no one ever says: you are already enough — he keeps performing. To bigger and bigger crowds. That is not strength. That is a child still waiting to be told he is loved. In 1968 I began a television program. The world that year was on fire. Two assassinations. Cities burning. I put on a cardigan and changed my shoes and spoke quietly to a camera as if there were one child on the other side of it. Because there was. There always is. Daniel Tiger was afraid. King Friday tried to control everyone because he was afraid of what he couldn't control. A feeling that has no name lives in the body as rage . A feeling that has a name can eventually be put down. I testified before the Senate in 1969 to save funding for public television. I sat across from Senator Pastore and spoke to him the way I spoke to children. He said: Looks like you just earned the twenty million dollars. I didn't do anything except look at him as someone who deserved to be seen. That is the most radical thing I know how to do. How are you feeling? Not performing. Not winning. Feeling. Because what I see — the contempt, the cruelty, the crowds celebrating the humiliation of people told they deserve to be humiliated — that is not the behavior of people who feel safe. That is the behavior of people who have a feeling with no name living in their bodies as rage. I know that feeling. I spent my life teaching people what to do with it. Won't you be my neighbor? The one who is different. The one whose feelings are as real as yours. The one you were told to fear but who is, I promise you, also afraid. A neighbor is someone whose life touches yours and whom you are asked to see as fully human. That is the only thing that has ever actually worked. I am not angry with you. I am sad. The shaming. The contempt. The message that some people are worth less than others. It makes them less. Every time. Without exception. It is a beautiful day in this neighborhood. It still is. The feelings can still be named. The neighbor can still be seen. The child who was never told he was enough can still be told. You don't have to perform. You don't have to make anyone small. You are already enough. Not because you won. Not because the crowd cheered. Because you are here. Because there is no one in the whole world like you. And I like you just the way you are. Even now. Especially now.