All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten

Child-1864718_640It seems like there’s often value in getting back to basics. We all learn things throughout life, but much of what we really need was learned early. 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 sand pile at school.

Here are some 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 in 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, and 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, love, basic sanitation, ecology, politics, equality, and sane living.

Take any one of those items, translate it into sophisticated adult terms, and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if the whole world had cookies and milk at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all 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 in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

Source: "All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten" by Robert Fulghum.  

There’s no doubt about it, that’s pretty good advice! And now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s milk and cookies time!

We hope you have time to join us for one of our last workshops of 2018.  If you want to get your planning done once and for all and start 2019 with your planning done, join us.

Jeffrey Bellomo, Esq.