(Photo by Alan Light)

Brian Mann had something to say on Facebook.  He talked about the best of us, and how, when famous and nice people die, we grieve.

It’s true for me.  I mourn the people who have shared their life with me face-to-face but also those I meet through a TV screen. The beauty of who they are explodes into my living room.

Here’s Brian:

They were magnetic without seeming to need attention, secure enough in themselves to be humble, serious about the problems of ordinary people without becoming cynical about the world.

They each had the rare ability to make you feel that there was enough to go around: enough dignity, kindness, grace, enough room at the table.

Fred Rogers could look into a television camera and somehow convince a child that what they felt mattered.

Jimmy Carter could leave the presidency and spend the next four decades demonstrating that significance and status were not the same thing.

Dolly Parton could be larger than life and still make the person standing in front of her feel like the important one.

They didn’t use their presence to make themselves bigger.  They used it to make other people feel more human.  Their attention communicated something very liberating: I see you.  You belong here.

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I want to be like them

I want to be like me