ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTENAll 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.
Franz Kafka said, “we ought to read only books that bite and sting us.” What’s the last thing you read that bit and stung you?
When was the last time I borrowed a book from the library? It was such a long time ago. There is a period in my life that I devour all the books at the library and suddenly BOOM, I stop reading.
Bite me, I dare you. Vampire books are enjoyable to read because they bite. What stings them is that they still have their humanity, the love to be amongst the living. Ah, love, it makes my heart grow fonder. It’s lovely to feel the love of the Vampires. I feel so much love. Just wait a minute, that doesn’t sting.
There are a couple of books beside me that I pick up to read between TV commercials. I tell you, I can read a chapter by the time the ads are over, too many commercials on TV. “All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten” by Robert Fulghum and “The Pleasure of Finding Things Out” by Richard P. Feynman. These books are filled with humor and they both sting, a little.
The book that I keep on coming back that I never seem to finish reading is titled “Awareness … the perils and … opportunities for reality” written by Anthony de Mello. This is not an easy read or a romantic novel. This book cuts through the core, and I bleed just by reading it.
When I picked up the book, it opened on this chapter, and I quote in part: At a loss for Words: “God does not die on the day we cease to believe in a personal deity. But we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the ready radiance of wonder renewed daily, the source of which is beyond all reason. We don’t have to quarrel about a word, because “God” is only a word, a concept. One never quarrels about reality; we only quarrel about opinions, about concepts, about judgments.”
And this is the part the stings, hurts and takes a lot of reflection.“Drop your concepts, drop your opinions, drop your prejudices drop your judgments; and you will see that.”I fight and struggle with this regularly as I write my post and read others.
Photographs and Memories 