Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in preschool. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain but there in the sandpile at nursery 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 someone.
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 plastic 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 plastic cup – they all die. So do we.
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 they hold 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 our country had as a policy to always put things back where it found them and cleaned up its 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.
