I recently came across a video of the 1999 induction celebration of Mr. Rogers’ into the television hall of fame.  I stand in awe of Mr. Rogers because like no other human being I can recall, he achieved an outlier level of greatness – a game changing achievement – through absolute gentleness.  When we think of rebels and revolutionaries, people who bucked trends, spurned conventions, and refused to conform to social pressures of all kinds, particularly when we think of men, we think of James Dean types, punk rockers, or even the rising momentum of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s oratory.  But, of course, in some sense these types are conforming in their nonconformity to the gender stereotype of what a man is supposed to be.  And, the problem with that stereotype (which is not necessarily the problem of the leaders who fall into it) is that it does not look deeper into what a human being is supposed to be.

Mr. Rogers did not simply repeat the structures of gender stereotypes in demonstrating his value as a human being.  Instead, he understood that human beings needed to risk developing their capacity for gentleness in order to achieve our fullest capacity for greatness.