Life's Lessons Are Learned When You Are A Child.
Posted by Heather Taskovics · 2 Comments
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Lately, I’ve been thinking of the well-known essay by Robert Fulghum, “All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten”, and realized that we really did learn (almost) everything we needed to know about life skills when we were just 5 or 6 years old.
Now I know that Fulghum’s essay doesn’t touch on useful subjects like how to change a diaper, bake cookies, change the oil in your car, fix a flat, or anything really useful like that, but it does remind us of the more simplistic aspects of life.
If you’ve never read the essay, here it is below:
*ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN
(a guide for Global Leadership)
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.
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 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. 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 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 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.
Imagine what life would be like if we all followed these simple lessons. It’s possible we all would be able to better resolve our differences by taking the time to listen to each other over a nice cold glass of milk and a plate of chocolate chip cookies. Perhaps governments would learn to work together to provide renewal resources all over the globe–which not only would help save the environment but create jobs and thereby help to end poverty. Or MAYBE–just maybe–we’d finally realize that even with all our differences, we really all are just human beings who have the same needs and desires: we all eat, drink, breathe, bathe, sleep, live, love, hope, laugh, cry and play…just like everyone else.
Be good to yourself and to others and to the environment as well. You all deserve it.
Namaste,
PS. I would love to know your thoughts. Please leave a comment below. If you like what you’ve read, sign up for my blog and feel free to share the link on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.
*Source: “ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN” by Robert Fulghum. See his web site at http://www.robertfulghum.com/
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It all comes back to basics, doesn’t it? The rules are so simple, yet we tend to make them more complicated as we get older. We’re so busy trying to get what we want, and to “get ahead” that we forget the basic rules.
Instead of saying we’re sorry to a co-worker, we try to justify our actions so we don’t look bad. We’re so busy we forget to pick up after ourselves. We don’t take time for milk and cookies because the presentation slides still need to be done. And on it goes.
Thanks for sharing, Heather.
Thank you Heather for sharing this. What we learn by age 5 forms us forever.
We can learn so much from children too. Have you ever noticed how they may fight over a toy or something and 5 minutes they’re playing with each other again.
Children are so forgiving.
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