The below excerpt is from my favorite Chicken Soup for the Soul book - I wanted to record it here to read it with fond memories when 30-year-old me chances upon this blog later!
Most of what I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be, I learnt in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate mountain but there in the sandbox at nursery school.
These are the things I learnt: 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. 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 for traffic, hold hands and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice-they all die. So do us.
And then remember the nursery rhyme Jack and Jill and the first word you learnt, 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 sane living.
Think of what a better world it would be if we all-the whole world-had cookies and milk and about 3o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nations to always put things back where we found them and cleaned up our own messes. And it is still true; no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world, it is better to hold hands and stick together.
The universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson. The mountain teaches stability and grandeur; the ocean immensity and change. Forests, lakes and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes-every form of animate or inanimate existence leaves its impress upon the soul of man. Even the bee and ant have brought their little lessons of industry and economy.
Most of what I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be, I learnt in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate mountain but there in the sandbox at nursery school.
These are the things I learnt: 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. 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 for traffic, hold hands and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice-they all die. So do us.
And then remember the nursery rhyme Jack and Jill and the first word you learnt, 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 sane living.
Think of what a better world it would be if we all-the whole world-had cookies and milk and about 3o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nations to always put things back where we found them and cleaned up our own messes. And it is still true; no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world, it is better to hold hands and stick together.
The universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson. The mountain teaches stability and grandeur; the ocean immensity and change. Forests, lakes and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes-every form of animate or inanimate existence leaves its impress upon the soul of man. Even the bee and ant have brought their little lessons of industry and economy.
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