reading again

when i
find a really
important
and life-changing
book
i like
to read it over
and over
again

so
i thought
i would share
it with
you-all
today

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

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 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 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 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 about three o'clock every 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 into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

--Robert Fulghum


baby bush
are you
listening???

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and now for something completely different: Simple Living Network

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10 comments:

Peacechick Mary said...

Do you think it's too late to send Bush and his gang to Kindergarten?

FreakyNick said...

I read that book a long time ago. I'm now thinking that I need to read it again, I remember i really enjoyed it.

Love that link.....

Simplicity, Simplicity, Simplicity.
- Thoreau

Lew Scannon said...

I get lost without my afternoon nap....

BBC said...

Good book.

Now are you ready for

Think On These Things

By J. Krishnamurti?

nunya said...

I love Robert Fulghum. Thanks for the reminders.

Graeme said...

i don't think bush ever went to kindergarten

Mark Prime (tpm/Confession Zero) said...

I'd just like for him to spell kintergarten...I don't ask much of Bush, just that he be able to read, speak, write, and think... Okay. Maybe I am asking for a bit much...

BBC said...

I do live simply, I'm kind of a master at it. But just try finding a woman that wants to.

Pam said...

I bet all bush did in kindergarten was hit other kids and eat paste.

Me said...

What Pam said.
ROTFLMAO!