Last night I found myself weeping while watching the last show of Bill Moyers series Now on PBS. He gave a nice farewell thanking his staff, his wife, his sponsors, and PBS - but it was the moment that he shared that he had joined PBS 40 years ago that I was just so sad. I have been watching him for a lifetime either through PBS or through his work on CBS. In my home you started with Mr. Rogers and then transitioned to Moyers. In fact, I always kind of thought of them as the same - kind, generous of heart, and reasoned- a lot like my dad.
It's amazing to me the people that we bring into our lives who have no idea what an impact they have had; authors, songwriters, musicians, radio personalities, television and movie actors, news journalists, politicians- people who ultimately form your world view in some way. These are people that we trust with our ideas, how they portray the world, and we trust them.
And just like those in our real lives - they move on either through death or retirement.
If we were to list those who we have never met who have had such a significant impact on our lives I think we would be surprised by the number. What are we learning from them? How are they building our view of our experience? Are we fighting their fight, learning to think like they do, seeing their vision of what our world can be? Maybe all of that and more.
With Bill Moyers, I learned that sitting quietly and listening are more beneficial then shouting my opinion. I learned that it is OK to have unpopular opinions and to express them with courage and kindness. I learned that there are great thing to learn from writers, activists, actors, politicians, academics, and people passionate about their existence. I also learned to love what you do and you can do it for 40 years.
And so, it is an end of an era. Reasonable news coverage without shouting has come to a bit of an end with the retirement of Mr. Moyers, but that is OK because he taught us well.
