I recently stumbled across an old paperback that had been tucked away in a box for more than forty years: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum.
The yellowed pages took me straight back to 1986—the year I graduated from high school, started college. I wondered if the book would still resonate after all these years.
It did.
Fulghum's book isn't really about kindergarten. It's about the simple rules that make life work. Rules we learned before we could spell our names, before we cared what anyone thought of us, and before life became so wonderfully complicated. Things like:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Put things back where you found them.
They're simple enough for a five-year-old to understand, yet somehow difficult for grown adults to practice. Somewhere along the way, we didn't outgrow those lessons—we simply buried them under busier lives.
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We need to go back in time. Before you realized nobody used the white crayon. Before you were told that the black jelly beans were “poisonous”. Before your dad's old shirt became your painting smock. Before you were too embarrassed to sing or dance in public. (Ask a group of Kindergarteners—“who wants to dance”? Every hand in the room shoots up.)
Life moved more slowly then. Every day felt like an adventure. We couldn't wait to get to school, and we couldn't wait to go back tomorrow.
A Rite of Passage
If you grew up in Atlanta you went to Mathis Dairy in Kindergarten. And, more importantly, you milked Rosebud—a real live cow. They handed out cold chocolate milk in little glass bottles with paper straws. It was a rite of passage.
Maybe that's what we've lost. Not our childhood, but our sense of wonder. The simplicity of milking a cow. The joy of a cold bottle of chocolate milk. Life was better because our attention was different.
Children notice everything.
Adults notice almost nothing.
We’d be wise to start over. To live life like a kindergartner. To learn something new every day. To draw and paint. To sing and dance. To take a nap. To clean up our own messes. Not just the ones on the floor, but the careless words. The unnecessary arguments.
Personally, I still believe warm cookies and cold milk solve more problems than we give them credit for. Maybe we should send some warm Snickerdoodles and cold 2% milk to Tehran.
I sometimes miss the slower pace of growing up in the 70’s and 80’s. Long summer evenings that felt as though they would never end. Three television channels. One family telephone. Fresh milk delivered to the front door at 5am.
Toward the end of the book, Fulghum reminds us of another lesson from kindergarten. Be aware of wonder.
Remember planting that tiny seed in a Styrofoam cup? The roots disappeared into the soil while the little green shoot reached toward the sun. Nobody really knew how it worked. It just did. Maybe that's true of life, too.
Life is astonishing, fragile, and far shorter than we imagine. We spend so much time chasing things that we overlook the miracles sitting quietly in front of us—a beautiful sunrise, a full moon, the laughter of a child or coloring with a friend.
When my daughter was in kindergarten, Templeton the classroom rat died. Not sure why they had a rat in a classroom—but those were dark days at our house. She cried harder over that little rat than many adults cry over things that matter far more. I wrote about grief here.
To children, life and death still matter. They haven't learned to rush past either one. Perhaps that's the lesson we've forgotten.
Fulghum reminds us of the first big word we ever learned: LOOK. Maybe that's still the best advice we'll ever receive. Look at the people around you. Look at the beauty you've stopped noticing. Look at the life you've been given. Be grateful.
The kindergarten rules were never really about children. They were the keys to a better life:
Share.
Be kind.
Say you're sorry.
Hold hands.
Stick together.
Never lose your sense of wonder.
Look.
Be grateful.
Because in the end, those simple lessons may still be the only instruction book we need for a happy life.
What rules did Robert Fulghum leave out? Is there something you would add? Leave me a message by clicking the link below. I promise that you’ll hear back from me cause, you know, I’m a real person and all.
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