Words to Live By

With the Occupy movement spreading throughout the United States, and debates raging around the complicated issues. It's important to take a step back and remember that the important things really aren't that complicated.

This is hands down my absolute favorite “poem” ever. It is actually drawn from a book by Robert Fulghum. I remember the first time I read it, I was in University. I was at a poster fair at the start of the year, and there it was on a poster. Through my many moves, the poster eventually got ruined, but the message of these words still sticks with me, and gives me chills every time I read it.

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 sandbox 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.

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 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 all of us -- 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 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.

Simple yet, so powerful! I encourage you to pass it on as a reminder that sometimes life is not as comlicated as we make it.


Going out to get a new poster,

Mandy:)