All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten

by Robert Fulghum
an excerpt from the book, 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 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 
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 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.

No matter how many times I read and re-read that, I just can't hear it enough.