Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do,
and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the
graduate school 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 someone.
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 some every day.
Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out into the world, watch for
traffic, hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the
little seed in the plastic 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 plastic cup -- 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. Everything 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 if we had a basic policy in our nation and other
nations to always put things back where we found them and cleaned up our own
messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into
the world it is best to hold hands and stick together.
-- Robert Fulghum, "All I ever really needed to know I learned
in kindergarten"
