(By Robert Fulghum)
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 graduate school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things that I learned:
Share everything
Play fair
Don't hit people
Put things back where you found them
Clean up your 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. Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or 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 about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all the governments had as 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.
