All I Really Need to Know I Learned In Kindergarten

"If you ask my next-door neighbor what he does for a living, he will tell you that he is a professional gambler involved in organized crime. In truth, he is an insurance agent. He has a healthy disrespect for his business, and extends that skeptical mode into his philosophy of life. “We’re all gamblers,” says he, “every one of us. And life is a continual crapshoot and poker game and horse race.” Then he adds, “And I love the game!”

These words are from the book "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" by Robert Fulghum. Full of uncommon thoughts and marvellous vignettes, this book shows a simpler way to look at life. Some interesting words follow....

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“He’s a great believer in hedging his bets, however, protecting himself by betting both ways when the odds are close. Philosophically this gets expressed in these sayings mounted on his office wall:

Always trust your fellow man. And always cut the cards.
Always trust God. And always build your house on high ground.
Always love thy neighbor. And always pick a good neighborhood to live in.
The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but you better bet that way.
Place your bet somewhere between turning-the-other-cheek and enough-is-enough-already.
Place your bet somewhere between haste-makes-waste and he-who-hesitates-is-lost.
About winning : It isn’t important. What really counts is how you play the game.
About losing : It isn’t important. What really counts is how you play the game.
About playing the game : Play to win!

Does he really believe that? Does he live by it? I don’t know. But I play poker with him. And I bought my insurance from him.
I like his kind of odds."

"Recently I set out to get the statement of personal belief down to one page in simple terms, fully understanding the naïve idealism that implied. The inspiration for brevity came to me at a gasoline station. I managed to fill an old car’s tank with super-deluxe high-octane go-juice. My old hoopy couldn’t handle it and got the willies—kept sputtering out at intersections and belching going downhill. I understood.

My mind and my spirit get like that from time to time. Too much high-content information, and I get the existential willies—keep sputtering out at intersections where life choices must be made and I either know too much or not enough. The examined life is no picnic.

I realized then that I already know most of what’s necessary to live a meaningful life—that it isn’t all that complicated. I know it. And have known it for a long, long time. Living it—well, that’s another matter, yes? Here’s my Credo:

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.

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."

---excerpted from the book "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" by Robert Fulghum.

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