Before the world was obsessed with COVID-19, racist policing and sourdough starters, I saw the Mr. Rogers documentary, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” I found Mr. Rogers’ story to be so inspiring that since the pandemic I’ve read the biography, “Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers” and have listened to more interviews of his than I care to admit.

Mr. Rogers, a lifelong Republican, vegetarian, former-fat kid and Presbyterian minister, spent the majority of his professional life creating children’s public programming using a piano, some ratty puppets and his imagination.

Everything Mr. Rogers did had a specific purpose, including his weight. He militantly made sure his weight never went above or below 143 because that number counted out the letters to the phrase “I love you.”

He symbolically invited a (gay) Black man to enjoy the water of his kiddie pool with him during a time that still wasn’t allowed in the real world.

He refused to eat anything that had a mother.

His charitable giving through money, gifts and time were simply unmatched.

He had one of the most insane writing styles I’ve ever seen (known by those who worked with him as Freddish) which boiled down the entire understanding of children’s education into a handful of writing rules.

And what’s almost more interesting than any of these things, is that the kind, caring Mr. Rogers that people saw on TV, was not an actor. He was just a dude in front of the camera. Every interview, every biography and everybody who knew the man reports that who you saw on TV is who he was when the cameras were off.

I tend to believe those reports because if someone ever wanted to out Mr. Rogers as a deviant or a generally mean person, 2020 would be the year to do it. Although I suppose we have six months left of the year.

But what’s more amazing still, is despite touching the hearts of millions of children over decades, after 9/11, Mr. Rogers openly wondered to those he was closest to if any of it was worth it. He struggled squaring the idea that a world filled with so much evil could even have the potential to do the good he worked to help it achieve.

And at the end of his life, while he was losing the battle to stomach cancer, he spent a lot of time in prayer and meditation worrying about his spiritual well being. He was terrified that he wasn’t good enough and that he didn’t do enough in the service of his God.

As someone who’s perpetually angry at someone or something, I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that one of the most sincere people to have positively influenced America’s children could worry that he didn’t do enough.

I mean, if refusing to eat anything that had a mother and testifying that you love everyone in thoughts, words, deeds and body weight doesn’t cut it, I’m certainly screwed.

Yet, in a way I also get it.

It’s so easy to see all of the things going on in the world and think, “What difference does any of it make?” It’s equally easy to think back on all the times you could have been doing something for someone else or could have been a force for good but opted to be selfish or mean instead.

There’s a ton of who-me-never selfishness deniers out there, but we know they’re lying. If 2020 has shown me anything, it’s that a large number of people can’t even be slightly inconvenienced in the name of someone else’s well being.

And our collective selfishness just compounds the problems in the world.

It’s easy to hyper-fixate on the violence that’s erupted from some of the BLM protests and ignore the fact that they’ve been largely peaceful. It’s easy to see all of the videos of police committing violence against peaceful protesters and ignore the fact that most cops haven’t used violence.

It’s easy to see the rising body count of COVID-19 and not secretly hope your neighbor who thinks masks are a communist plot gets a cotton swab rammed up their nasal cavity because they had a case of the sniffles.

But here’s the thing.

If we let ourselves give in to helplessness, things are only bound to get worse, not better. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it does bend toward justice.

It has to.

If it doesn’t, everything we do is ultimately for nothing.

That being said, we have to make it bend. And we can’t make it bend unless we believe in the goodness of people enough to at least make an effort — to be the helpers that Mr. Rogers infamously talked about.

It’s not enough to take solace in knowing that helpers exist, but we need to put aside those feelings of self-doubt and cynicism and become helpers ourselves as Fred did.

We might not reach a point where we all weigh 143 pounds, but we can at least attempt to make the world a little more bearable day after day.

Anything less than that isn’t enough.