“Let’s Make the Most of This Beautiful Day”

Progressive Futuring through Despair, Hope, and Fred Rogers

Abstract

In this reflection, I focus on why emphasis on the progressive moment of currere cannot be lost in the work of understanding the past and present, and why it is a “futuring” of who I am and possibilities for the world I might live in that opens the possibility for greater awareness in the synthetical moment. For this paper, I offer a glimpse into this clarifying work from my own ruminations on my lived autobiography and hopeful dreaming. As we see through this article, my careful study of the life and works of Fred Rogers and my growing partnership with the Fred Rogers Institute have given me new ways to trace my thinking and sense-making as I move from remembering to dreaming. The song “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” has been a helpful analytic framework as I try to think about what it means for me to come into this present moment with greater awareness of how I must move in the world with what I now know. Drawing on my experiences of isolation as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, moving to the progressive, I imagine spaces that are hospitable to dis/Abled bodies and minds. Here, I argue for the ways nonnormativity enhances neighborliness. I conclude with examples of what I have learned through currere as process about myself, forgiveness, and what it means to re-enter the present with greater awareness of what I must do to realize a less ableist world.