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“All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten”
I realized then that I already knew most of what’s necessary to live a meaningful life — that it isn’t all that complicated. I know it. And have known it for a long, long time. Living it — well, that’s another matter, yes? Here’s my Credo:
ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live and what to do and how to be, I (we) learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile in Elementary 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 and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold
hands, and stick together.
Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant 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 Styrofoam cup — they all die. So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first
word you learned — the biggest word of all — LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living. Relationship building and team building and business development.
Robert Fulghum
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