Mixed feelings

The art of ambivalence

A still from Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood

Hey y’all,

Yesterday we dropped our boys off at school. They are now fifth and third graders! When I got back home to the empty house, I thought of a song from Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, a show we watched a lot with the boys when they were little:

Sometimes
you feel two feelings
at the same time
And that's okay

Nowadays the boys try to make fun of him (“Cringe!”) but we will not tolerate the mocking of Daniel Tiger in this house. Daniel Tiger got us through many a morning, and some of the songs have been drilled into my brain like Bible verses. There are Daniel Tiger jingles for any multitude of situations I might find myself in. (See: “That was fun / but now it’s done!” or “You Can Be More Than One Thing” for the ”multi-hyphenate” crowd.)

Ambivalence comes up a lot in Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, as it should, because so much of being a human being is dealing with our mixed feelings. How can we simultaneously love someone but be so angry with them? How can we be attracted to somewhere and repulsed by it at the same time? How can we both want and not want something? These are the kind of mental and emotional complexities we encourage our children to explore and process. And yet! Sometimes I feel that the adults around me are becoming less and less equipped to deal with these very complexities…