All I really needed to know

published September 1, 2011

in the Stockton Sentinel

Stockton, Kansas

The new school year is already a week old, and everyone is already looking forward to the first holiday this coming weekend. My, how time flies! During this first week, teachers and students got themselves organized, rules were set forth, schedules and routines were established. Once this three-day weekend passes, it will be time to dig in and get serious about the business of school. Summer memories will fade into a haze just as daylight hours get shorter.

Last week, I shared in this column the “Eleven Rules of Life,” as set forth by Bill Gates to a group of high school students. His rules consist of those lessons that aren’t learned in school, but ones that hit you head-on when you enter the “real world.”

This week, I want to share Robert Fulghum’s thoughts entitled, “All I Ever Really Needed to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten.” These thoughts are much kinder and gentler than those I shared last week, but no less true. I have saved Fulghum’s essay for many years, and even if you have read this at one time or another, it is so simple and so right-on that it bears repeating.

“Most of what I really need to know about how to live, 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 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 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 at about three 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 to clean up our own messes.

“And it is still true – when you go out into the world – it is best to hold hands and stick together.”

I believe Fulghum’s thoughts are basic, beautiful and parallel to scriptural teachings and my own Biblical beliefs. Since we are all students and lifelong learners, these simple rules apply across all ages and stages of life.

And I’ll go along with anyone who tells me that warm cookies and cold milk are good for me.