"I like you... just the way you are. Stuff and all."

The power of the sentence "I like you, just the way you are" is that it comes to a full stop.
Period. No ifs, ands, or buts.

If anything at all comes after, such as "stuff and all", it's implied
"Even though you have this problem..." 

That's my Lenten goal, to say or just to think "I like you, just the way you are"  every day. 

It's easy to say to Marz and bink. Even though of course we sometimes hit bumps, I do like and love them just the way they are. 

It's much harder to address it in any way to others.
Yesterday I tried it on a couple annoying bus riders. I could think the words, but I couldn't fully feel they were true...

Still, I LOVE the sentence:
 it liberates the sayer (or thinker), me, from having to weigh and judge other people.
It's like having a flat-fee arrangement:
you don't have to measure out and weight and calculate the price of everything.
Default to a general “best possible attitude”. 

It's all free! Take what you need.

(Or, at my Book's, all paperbacks are 99 cents. Saves so much time and needless frettery.)

Also, I love being on the receiving end.

I was thinking about this because I went to see A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, starring Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers.
I wept through it.
It's about a journalist with a father who selfishly and cruelly left the family when the journalist was young and the mother was dying.
Mine is a different story, but I related to the dad pain.

I didn't grow up watching Mr Rogers. I don't know much about him, but I love his simple messages. Besides "you are likeable":
it's OK to feel sad and mad, as well as glad; 
let's learn what to do when we feel bad (so we don't hurt ourselves and others).

Some people have told me they don't like Mr Rogers, but I haven't been able to figure out why.
I can see his slow pace can be annoying, but more than that, 
I wonder if it's threatening to hear someone offer such simple but such DIFFICULT things to do... and maybe to accept?

Does it make us feel bad?

In fact, I did feel bad for a couple days after watching the movie--sadnesses and longings had been stirred up, and feelings of insufficiency too.
Most of all, I felt a longing to be emotionally vulnerable, but I HATE being emotionally vulnerable.
It makes me want to .... Build a Wall!

I blame Mr Rogers for making me feel that way.
Ha.

(What would have happened if our US president had learned Mr Rogers's messages? Would he be less likely to hurt himself and others?)

I sat with my discomfort, and I decided it slots right into my stated desire at New Year's to be less reactionary.
I mean, I feel uncomfortable being vulnerable, and much more comfortable pushing people and emotions away, or building a wall to keep them out.

Oh.
I added the "Stuff and All" clause because I'm reading this fascinating book,
Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things, by Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee, Houghton Mifflin, 2010.

I'm only on the second chapter, but I'm so fascinated.
Besides the specifics, it's another of those "brain science and human behavior" topics that interest me.
Could be about almost any topic, though this one is close to me:
It relates to my job of course, working with stuff, 
and I know lots of people who have hoarding tendencies--(pretty normal in a materialistic society that churns out stuff)––or a few who are, rarer, full-blown compulsive hoarders.

And all my artist friends have tons of stuff for transformation—
another kind of relationship to stuff. 

I'd even just been wondering, after I visited the rich people in their house full of beautiful stuff, about the difference between hoarding and collecting.
There are psychological differences, but there are also big class differences in our attitudes toward stuff.
I love this stuff!