Fred Rogers used to do something wonderful when speaking to live audiences. He would close by inviting everyone in the room to spend one minute silently reflecting on specific individuals who had helped them become who they needed to be. The people who, as he said, “smiled you into smiling, people who have talked you into talking, sung you into singing, loved you into loving.” In a masterful move, he’d take the spotlight that’d been placed on him and have it somehow shine on everybody else.

There’s a clip of Fred doing this at an awards show, which I’d seen years ago. As it was passed around online, I originally assumed he said it only that one time. However, as I dove through hundreds of his speeches while at the archives of the Fred Rogers Center, I found it was something he did repeatedly. This wasn’t because he didn’t have anything else to share or say. The audiences were diverse—Hollywood stars, heads of state, educators, or migrant workers—and he’d have important personal messages for each. Though large portions of his speeches might change, this silent, reflective minute remained a key part of his message to adults. It was his steady reminder that no matter who we are, we all matter to each other.

One minute might not seem like a long time, but it does when you’re seated with hundreds of people in complete silence. Some people would cry. Some people would laugh uncomfortably or try to ignore the exercise altogether. But something in the sincerity and the resounding truthfulness of this message would leave the room in a quiet awe. Even in video clips of these speeches you can feel the power of remembrance as each room basks in the glow of this rare reflective gratitude. At the conclusion of his minute, the gentle and thoughtful Fred would then say, “Whomever you’ve been thinking about, imagine how grateful they must be that you remember them when you think of your own becoming.”

Children begin understanding this at an early age. In our conversations, kids were eager to share stories of wonderful grownups. They weren’t always complaining about things they wished grownups would do or say differently. In the same way parents or aunts or uncles might beam about the kids in their lives, many kids would swell with great pride when talking about the grownups in theirs.

This was from a fourth grader: “I love my mom, because she does so much for my sisters and me. She’s working two shifts and making sure we have everything we need.” I don’t know if this student could’ve really told me what a shift is or what “working two shifts” means. Sure, she might not know all the particulars, but I do think she fully understands that her mother is working hard. Most important, she understands her mother is working hard and doing so out of love. I don’t know if she’d ever said this to her mother, but I’m certain her mother would’ve been proud to hear what her daughter was saying about her.

Other students shared stories about grownups they knew who were taking classes at night to get college degrees. They spoke openly about parents who were starting and running their own businesses. These students seemed to understand the risks and the sacrifices of career and raising a family. There seemed to be many real-world struggles these kids knew and grasped in ways that I definitely didn’t until I was much older.

These young people seemed to be on a mission with the grownups in their lives. There was a sense that they were all wrapped up in it together. Like members of a team, they were a small part of a larger whole. In every classroom there’d be a handful of students who’d share about the people they lived with, and I’d end my time with them hoping that one day my children or other kids in my life might speak of our family in that way. Sometimes these conversations could be heartbreaking, but more often than not they were inspiring.

The more I heard kids talk about the people they admired, the more I wanted these kids to tell those actual people. Sure, I enjoyed their stories. But I couldn’t stop wondering what sort of good might happen if they spoke this appreciation to their loved ones directly. With that idea in mind, I decided to try something.

I began presenting kids with this fill-in-the-blank:

I am ______ because you were ______. It’s pretty simple. Like, you might say: I am CONFIDENT IN WHO I AM because you were ALWAYS ENCOURAGING ME. Or I am ON THE SOCCER TEAM because you were THE ONE WHO TOLD ME I COULD DO IT. I am WHO I AM because you were IN MY CORNER. It’s a statement directly affirming that our identities now—who we are at this very moment—are tied up in and somehow the result of the person someone else was for us. It is one thing inspiring something else. It is the origin of our becoming who we were meant to be.

I began sharing these little printouts with students I visited. The instructions were easy: Fill in the blanks and share it with the influential person in your life. This was something that would have to happen beyond my time with the students. Because of this, I had no assurance that kids would actually do it. I was approaching that dangerous territory of being a guy who’d shown up only to give them homework. My goal when starting out on this mission was just to listen. But from what I’d been hearing, these kids had so much to say, and I wasn’t the only grownup who needed to hear it.

A fifth-grade teacher sent me an image of a scrappy little printout. It said, “I am GOING TO COLLEGE ONE DAY because you were MY EXAMPLE.” The teacher then filled me in on the backstory. “He took this home to his brother,” she wrote. “He’s just started college this semester, which is a big deal for their family. Their father is in prison, so this is a commitment that both of these boys are forging a new path.”

Not surprisingly, many teachers had students present notes to them.

“I am GOING TO BE ON THE HONOR ROLL because you were PATIENT WITH ME,” wrote one student. She placed it on her teacher’s desk without signing it. It’s tough to surprise a teacher, though. They know the hearts—and the handwriting—of every person in the room. Though this teacher immediately knew who the surprise note was from, she was surprised by the message on it. “She and I have had a long year,” wrote the teacher. “I was blown away by her confidence and pride in her academic work. I’m going to treasure this message from her. I was already proud of this girl, but it means so much to know that she’s proud of herself, too.”

As elementary school students began appreciating the people in their lives, other students at their schools began joining in the fun. Classrooms of older kids began using the idea. Teachers and administrators joined in the gratitude. When I began sharing a few of the stories and posted the prompt online, even more gratitude came pouring in.

I am ALIVE because YOU DIDN’T GIVE UP ON ME.

I am FEARLESS because you were BRAVE.

I am SERVING CHILDREN NOW because you were CARING FOR ME THEN.

The internet became a patchwork quilt of “I am ______ because you were ______” responses. It became a way for people from all walks of life to acknowledge mentors, coaches, guides, and friends. Selfishly, it became a way for me to hide from a discouraging news cycle and focus on hope. These were reminders that one human can completely alter the course of another’s life. I marveled at the honesty and beauty of each one. With every new story, I was granted a perspective that allowed me to transcend whatever else was happening in the world that day. There might’ve been dark or discouraging headlines, but I was getting a daily text crawl showing me the truer, quieter news happening all around.

An email with a photo of an entire college campus holding up “I am ______ because you were ______” signs found its way to my inbox. This school in Searcy, Arkansas—Harding University—urged its entire student population to pause and recognize someone who’d made their lives better. They did it. The photo made my heart do cartwheels. Thousands of students filled with gratitude held signs representing people who believed in them. I thought that surely there’d be no topping that moment. But it was just the beginning, as I’d find out several months later.

Little did I know that in that photo was a man named Steve Shaner. When he was presented with the question, he knew exactly whom he wanted to celebrate. The first person who came to mind for him was the same person who’d always come to mind for him: his eighth-grade teacher, Mrs. Dorothy Fisch.

One of five children, Steve was never the best student. When he was an eighth grader in Middletown, Rhode Island, he’d already been in and out of ten different schools. His family had moved around quite a bit, and with each move, Steve got a little further behind in school. This had an effect not only on his academic and social life but also his confidence.

Mrs. Fisch’s classroom was unlike any other place he’d been before. It was an English class, and he’d never considered himself much of a reader. This class should’ve been hard for him, but instead it turned out to be one of his favorite places in the world. Steve remembered how Mrs. Fisch read aloud to her students, something that brought books to life. For the first time, everything clicked. School suddenly made sense. Much later in life, he’d be diagnosed with a few learning disorders. He didn’t yet understand how differently he processed information from how his classmates did. One of those things he’d later discover is that he is an auditory learner. Mrs. Fisch’s reading aloud was exactly what he needed. Neither he nor she had any clue just how much.

In Mrs. Fisch’s class, Steve even found himself being excited about homework. One of the assignments for her class was to create a magazine. The project required writing articles, creating advertisements, designing a cover, and even pitching it to the entire class. Having never done these things in his life, Steve found himself coming alive. “I got into that assignment like Ralphie writing a theme letter to Santa Claus.” It was his first A+.

Then came the real kicker. On his first A+ assignment, Mrs. Fisch added a note with the grade. She wrote, “You should go into journalism or advertising. You would be really good at that!” So that’s what Steve did.

As he sat in the audience with the university students, Steve’s mind went back to Mrs. Fisch. He began to go through the grand timeline of his life. Her guiding light and gentle revelation led him down a path. With just a few words on a class assignment, she’d launched him into a lifetime of work he loved. He’d gone on to get a degree in mass communications, work in television, radio, and photography, and even become part owner of a small community newspaper. His colorful career was tailor-made for his gifts. His life had been more than that scrappy, unpolished, unconfident eighth grader ever dreamed it could be before her note.

He was now a professor with students of his own. As he looked out at all the university students holding up their “I am ______ because you were ______” signs and heard them commit to sharing it with the person who’d believed in them, he panicked. It’d been forty-nine years since he’d last seen her. She was the teacher who’d changed his life. He’d never told her. Was she still alive? Was he too late?

Steve had no leads. He didn’t know where she was living or if she was living. A brief internet search turned up nothing. He tried everything he knew, but Mrs. Fisch was nowhere to be found. He’d waited too long. His expression of gratitude would now be just a cautionary tale. He’d share this story with the university students as a grand reminder to never forget to thank the people who helped shape you. Don’t wait until it’s too late.

Then he found her. In a roundabout way, Steve came across the Facebook profile of a woman named Dorothy Fisch. There was no way to be certain, but he felt confident enough to send her a message. Now instead of searching for her, he was searching for words—the right words. He had to explain who he was and why he wanted to reach out. Realizing this could be interpreted as creepy, he began second-guessing his entire mission. One doesn’t often get dispatches out of the blue from people you haven’t seen in five decades. Even so, Steve took a risk and sent the message. Then . . . he waited.

Nothing. Weeks passed and there was no response. This was either not the right Mrs. Fisch or he’d totally freaked her out or—and this is what he was holding out hope for—she just wasn’t active on Facebook. Gradually going from professor to detective, Steve noticed her profile picture had a handful of likes. So he crafted a message to her friends.

Then it happened.

Steve got a response from one of Dorothy’s friends who went by the name Cookie. She’d later reveal that she’d gone to great lengths to make sure he wasn’t up to any trouble. “We checked you out real good,” she told him. You see, just as Steve loved Mrs. Fisch, well, so did her friends.

So what had Mrs. Dorothy Fisch been up to? She’d continued to teach school after Steve had last seen her. In total, she’d taught for twenty-eight years, reading aloud countless books and impacting even more students. Since retiring from the classroom, Dorothy had been living in Delaware. There she spent a large amount of her retirement as the children’s librarian at the local public library, where she led the story hour.

Though more than a thousand miles separated them, Steve made arrangements to thank Mrs. Fisch in person. On that day, Mrs. Fisch walked into the library, as she’d done many times before. That day, though, was different. That day, as she entered, there was an anticipation and a swell of joy. That day, in a building she loved, filled with books and stories and dreams, Dorothy was greeted by someone she hadn’t seen in many years and had no reason to think she’d see again. Someone who’d never forgotten her words. Her presence in the life of a young person forty-nine years ago had boomeranged right back to her.

Through hugs and tears, Steve took a moment to step back. As he did, he asked, “Are you really Dorothy Fisch, my eighth-grade English teacher from forty-nine years ago?”

“Apparently I am,” she said. The two laughed.

He’d brought along two of his grandchildren, who looked on as stories were swapped about life and time and the wonder of it all. Cookie, of course, was there, too. Dorothy’s local newspaper even showed up to document the occasion.

As they talked, Dorothy and Steve pieced something together. She’d have been only twenty-three or twenty-four years old when he was in her class. This was very early in her teaching career, a time when most educators or anyone starting a new job feels at their most inadequate. Even so, here they were. She’d done something right.

Steve has a wall in his office that’s covered with photos of students who’ve gone through his classes. Some he stays in contact with. Some he might not hear from for forty-nine years. He’s started calling it the “Fisch effect.” Each of those photos represents a person he might never have met had she not entered his life just when he needed her.

He told Dorothy about the wall of photos, about his career, and about the trajectory of his life. He looked at her and said: “I am who I am because you, Mrs. Dorothy Fisch, encouraged me.” There were tears. There was celebrating. This was a thank-you forty-nine years in the making.

My wife, Kristi, and I have a sign in our workshop that says, “BE WHO YOU NEEDED WHEN YOU WERE YOUNGER.” This has been a guiding principle for us and an animating force in our work for many years. It’s influenced everything she and I have ever done. None of it—service-learning camps, Kid President, the curriculum we’ve created for classrooms, or the Listening Tour—none of it would exist had we not asked, “How can we be who we needed when we were younger?”

I think going to this place in your mind unlocks memories. It also, I believe, unlocks purpose. When you reflect on how you can be who you needed when you were younger, bubbling up inside you will be pleasant and painful reminders of the support you had or the support wish you had. You’ll realize you now have the power to be the grownup you maybe forgot you could be.

It seems better grownups are the kind of people who live with great purpose. They operate out of gratitude for the kind of support they had when they were younger and work to fill that role for everyone around them now. It’s as if they’re operating as living thank-you notes, with every interaction becoming a way to express gratitude to the person who helped them grow. Better grownups also operate out of a desire to provide others with the kind of support they perhaps didn’t have. Their lives become a joyful rebellion against what they didn’t have so that others will have it. Most of the better grownups I’ve met are living as some mixture of both. Always, though, understanding they have the ability to make a lasting impact.

I met a male educator who purposely serves at a school because he didn’t have any positive male influences in his life. He’s being what he needed when he was younger. I met another educator who survived a traumatic childhood and now serves as a school counselor. She’s being what she needed when she was younger. We can all find great purpose when we remember our inner child’s great needs.

One day a student stopped me in my tracks. She asked me who I put down on my “I am ______ because you were ______” sheet. Funny, I’d been asking people all over the world to fill these out and hadn’t really been asked about my own. I’d been content to retreat into the beauty of everyone else’s messages. Who would I put? I drew a blank.

My mind went to my parents and grandparents. I thought of neighbors and relatives and family friends. All of them were vital in shaping me, but this Listening Tour was clearly the result of a grownup I needed when I was younger. I hadn’t put words to it, but then it hit me. This was all my fourth-grade teacher’s fault.

In fourth grade, I was a chronic doodler. Some students would finish tests early because they were good students. I, on the other hand, finished my tests early so that I could draw on the back. Any blank space on any paper was my canvas. These would be epic drawings of birds and self-invented cartoon characters. They wouldn’t just be for decoration; these were adventurous stories that I just had to get out of me. My thinking was that the teacher would never see these or pay them any attention, because it was the back of the test. She’d be too occupied to notice. Except she noticed.

Mrs. Perkins began giving me little assignments to draw things for the class. She talked about them in front of everyone. The older students at our school had just started a newspaper. She encouraged me to submit some comics to them. To my surprise, they accepted them. Everyone else who wrote for the paper was in junior high or high school, and here were these little comics from an elementary school student. I couldn’t believe she saw value in my little doodles—or in me, for that matter. For some reason she believed in me. She even told me, “You’re very creative. You could do anything you want.”

It was her encouragement that led me to package up some of my drawings and stories. She said I should send them to Walt Disney. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Walt Disney was dead. Even if he weren’t, it was silly to think that anything I had to share with the world would matter to anyone. I was just a pale farm boy from a small town who liked to doodle. There’s nothing sensational about that. But her words—“You’re very creative. You could do anything you want.”—played and replayed in my mind.

One day I finally got the courage to send the Walt Disney Company several of my drawings. I even got an old tape recorder and used it to record a message for them. There was a note in there, too, about who I was and what my dreams were. I think I may have even put a few pieces of candy in, just in case that might push them over the edge. I found an address for the company and mailed them all my hopes and dreams.

Weeks passed and I forgot all about it. Then one day I came home from school and checked the mail as usual. Walking from our gravel driveway to the house, I thought I saw mouse ears on one of the return addresses. My eyes jumped out of my head. I dashed down the rest of our driveway, practically hovering over the rocks. When I made it to the door, I erupted into the house with an announcement: “EVERYONE! I GOT A LETTER FROM WALT DISNEY!”

“Walt Disney is dead,” said my brother.

“No, no, no! This is from people who work there! They wrote to me! They got the package I sent them!” Already I was thinking about how I’d have to move out of the house to be closer to them. I began wondering what we’d do about school. My teacher had been very supportive of my creative endeavors, and I was sure she’d be an advocate for me there.

My clumsy hands pulled the letter from the envelope and I began to read aloud:

Dear Mr. Montague, ________ →

THAT’S ME!

We received the package you sent us . . . ________ →

THEY GOT MY MAIL!

Words, words, words, words . . . ________ →

GROWNUP WORDS I DON’T KNOW YET!

The letter seemed to go on and on. I didn’t understand or comprehend all of it. I was pretty young at the time. I just knew it was a letter from PEOPLE WHO MADE STUFF LIKE MICKEY MOUSE. My insides were throwing a party. Confetti cannons were going off. Balloons were lifting from my heart and up into my head. Then I read the last line:

For legal reasons we cannot accept submissions from outside sources. We do hope you understand.

Then it was signed by somebody I didn’t know. My hands continued to grip the letter. The look on my mom’s face confused me. It was one of those sympathy expressions that moms give when they’re preparing for you to let all your emotions out. She was about to console me when I interrupted with a cheer: “They wrote me back!”

Obviously, I hadn’t grasped that it was basically a cease and desist order from sending them unsolicited materials. To me, it was a giant wink from the universe that I was on the right track. I existed! This giant company knew I existed! It would be many years before I fully realized what the letter meant or actually said. As part of this official form letter there was, however, one small personal element. In the bottom right corner in red marker, someone simply wrote: “You made our day! Thanks for sharing your voice.”

I don’t who wrote that or why. Maybe it was inspired by the candy I’d included in the package. It could’ve been that they were moved by the fact that a young kid had the courage to mail something out. Maybe they understood the power a few encouraging words can have on someone. Either way, it was the same exact message Mrs. Perkins had been trying to get through to me: My voice mattered. I mattered.

Many years removed from that time in my life, I now found myself in a classroom. This time as a grownup being asked by a fourth grader why I was doing what I was doing. My answer: I am trying to let children know they matter because you, Mrs. Perkins, were persistent in telling me I mattered.

I think often of Mister Rogers and his invitation to reflect and remember those people who “loved us into being.” The reason my wife and I have the words “BE WHO YOU NEEDED WHEN YOU WERE YOUNGER” hung up in our workspace is the same reason he asked people to sit and reflect for one golden, silent minute. We matter to each other. We need each other. We are poorer in strength and spirit when we forget this.

Who we are to each other helps shape all of us. We are all the products of the cumulative caring of many people. There’s a phrase people often use: made my day. We will say, “Aww! You made my day!” or “You said I made your day and that just made my day!” Somehow we have all the materials needed to make each other’s days. If we were to take time and really think about this, we’d go wild making days for each other. We’d craft them and design them to be truly unforgettable days. But we forget. At least, I forget. I’m trying to remember more.

On the day they met up, nearly fifty years after he’d been in her classroom, Steve had one last request of Mrs. Fisch. He asked if she’d mind reading a story to his grandchildren. She found a book, they sat at her feet, and she read. Just as she’d done so long ago for their grandfather, she read. With her gentle voice, which had altered their grandfather’s life, she read. Steve’s grandchildren listened intently, and when the story ended, Mrs. Fisch closed the book and placed it back on the shelf. With that, all had come full circle.