Fulghum's book on appreciating life's simple lessons and pleasures began as a sermon to his Unitarian congregation, then found its way into a Dear Abby column before taking its current form. From the lessons learned in kindergarten (Share everything. Play fair. Flush.) Fulghum comes to realizations about his own life. For example, rather than emulating a neighbor who battles the elements, raking the autumn leaves and shoveling the winter snow, Fulghum learns to let the leaves and the snow pile up, to fertilize and water the next generation of plants. Our nostalgia for the simple principles of kindergarten is tempered by the cheering thought that we can apply them in real life. Fulghum's gentle perambulations will appeal to all who have spent too long in the fast lane.
Excerpts
From the book
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Credo
To begin with, did I really learn everything I need to know in kindergarten? Do I still believe that? Here is the original essay, followed by my editorial reaction.
Each spring, for many years, I have set myself the task of writing a personal statement of belief: a Credo. When I was younger, the statement ran for many pages, trying to cover every base, with no loose ends. It sounded like a Supreme Court brief, as if words could resolve all conflicts about the meaning of existence.
The Credo has grown shorter in recent years--sometimes cynical, sometimes comical, and sometimes bland--but I keep working at it. 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 my 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. I 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.
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.
Deep Kindergarten
As I write this I am sixty-five years old. Not so old, really, but I have been around awhile....
Reviews
...
This blockbuster audio title of 15 years ago appears again with new material. Whether familiar with the original or not, listeners will find this update entertaining, inspirational, and simply wonderful to hear. The gentle 66-year-old author is secure and spontaneous in his insights. He reads with a youthful but well-tempered enthusiasm that overflows with his genuine interest in what people hear and how they're helped by his thoughts. Many listeners will have to slow down their listening pace to appreciate the complexity and subtlety of Fulghum's insights. But doing so will be rewarded because the message and substance herein reach into the deepest places of the heart. T.W. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine
Baltimore Sun...
"A HEALTHY ANTIDOTE TO THE HORRORS THAT PUMMEL US IN THIS DICEY AGE."
New York Daily News...
"It is interesting how much of it applies not only to individuals, grown or small, but even to nations."
San Francisco Chronicle...
"Within simplicity lies the sublime."
Los Angeles Times...
"As universal as fresh air and invigorating as the fragrance of a Douglas fir."
Digital Rights Information
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All copies of this title, including those transferred to portable devices and other media, must be deleted/destroyed at the end of the lending period.
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
by Robert Fulghum
