All I really need to know....
All 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 university
mountain, but there in the sand-pit at kindergarten. 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 are sorry when you hurt
somebody.
- Wash your hands before you
eat.
- Flush the
toilet.
- Warm cookies and milk are good for
you.
- Live a balanced live -- learn a little and
think a little and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day
a little.
- 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 yogurt carton: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody
really knows how or why, but we are all like
that.
- Cats and hamsters and white mice and even
the little seed in the yogurt carton -- they all die. So do
we.
- And then remember your first reading book and
the first word you learned -- the biggest of all --
LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden
Rule (treat the others as you would like them to treat you) and love and basic
sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.
Take one of these items and extrapolate it into sophisticated
adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or your government or
your world, and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it
would be if we all -- the whole world -- had cookies and milk at three o'clock
every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if all
governments had a basic policy to always put things back where they found them
and to clean up their own mess.
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.
(From "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten",
by Robert Fulghum)
