Monday, September 08, 2008

All We Really Needed To Know We Must Have Learned In The Kindergarten



Most of what I really needed to know about how to live and what to do and how to be, I learned in the kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate mountain, but there in the sandbox at nursery school.

These are the things I learned: Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm Cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play every day.

Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out into the world, watch for the traffic, hold hands and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic cup. The roots go down and the plants goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic -- they all die. So do we.

And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK. Every thing you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and sane living.

Think of what a better world it would be if we all -- the whole world -- had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or we had a basic policy in our nations to always put things back where we found them and cleaned up our own mess. And it is still true, no matter how old we are, when you go out into the world, it is better to hold hands and stick together.


-- Robert Fulghum --


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