Meditation has reached an interesting place in Western culture. It’s popular, well-reviewed by clinicians and scientists, and most people seem to have tried it.

Yet for all the acclaim meditation receives, it’s not very common to actually meditate regularly.

As hobbies go, meditation isn’t known for being beginner-friendly. Its learning curve can seem nearly wall-like at the beginning, mainly because its central task – focusing indefinitely on one thing – is essentially impossible if you haven’t already meditated for years.

You know this if you’ve tried it. Staying with a breath or two is no problem. But just beyond that, at some always-unseen moment, your intention to focus dissolves into dreamlike images, mental chatter, and bits of Taylor Swift songs.

A few weeks ago a viral tweet went around asking, “There’s only one month left in the decade… What have you accomplished?”

If that question strikes you as uncomfortable, you’re not alone.

Both the tweet and its tweeter have since disappeared from the platform, but you can still read the replies, and they say a lot about our notion of “achievement,” and how it’s changing.

The thread began with impressive lists of conventional successes: medals won, degrees earned, books published, startups sold. But as the replies accumulated, the tone shifted. More people began listing not what they had won or created but what they had survived—job losses, bad relationships, addiction, depression, chronic pain, debt, and anxiety.

Many described their great achievement of the 2010s as moving from an unbearably tough place to a bearably tough place, or even just surviving where they were. Virtual hugs and high fives were exchanged.

Last week, a friend and I went to see Last Christmas. It was sold out, which turned out to be a stroke of holiday good luck.

We saw the Mister Rogers biopic instead, and I think it made us kinder.

The filmmakers had recreated the show’s details perfectly. The busy piano theme that accompanies the trolley. The way Mr. Rogers changed shoes while he sang. The unexplained traffic light in his living room.

The nostalgic effect was intense. Apparently I hadn’t seen much of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood since I was its intended audience—a sensitive five-year-old, sitting cross-legged on our brown living room rug, bewildered by feelings.

At the time, I believed Mr. Rogers was an extremely kind man who talked directly to me and wanted me to be okay. Today, I think that’s exactly what he was trying to be, and what he was. By all accounts of those who knew Fred Rogers, he was really that kind.