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Fred

As Fred Rogers is one of my personal heroes, I was interested in seeing A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood when it first came out in 2019, but by then my hearing made any movie viewing without captioning impossible. When I saw Tubi had added it to their collection of free movies I was really pleased.

Tom Hanks plays Mr. Rogers with eerie precision, and an obvious respect for the man who influenced generations of young children. The relationship he develops with an angry, damaged journalist who comes to interview him is heart-warming but seems unlikely (if you've been around as many damaged people as I have, you know they only take advantage of kindness and understanding) but I was willing to go along with it. I simply disagree with the message of bringing harmful people back into your life for the sake of forgiveness, especially when they have not changed or stopped causing harm.

Women especially are almost expected to do this as part of some faith-based agenda, and for a long time I went along with it. When I realized that I was being used (and often abused) by folks who proved toxic to me, and they were never going to change, I set aside forgiveness and acceptance and cut them off. Removing toxic people from my life has finally allowed me to genuinely forgive them while not permitting their bad behavior toward me to continue. For me that's a win/win.

Everyone has their own opinion of Mr. Rogers, but he once said something that explained so much that I didn't understand about life: "Love is at the root of everything. All learning, all parenting, all relationships. Love or the lack of it." For that I will always be grateful.

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