The Importance of Re-reading!
As you might suspect, I don’t get a chance to often read just for pleasure. I imagine that this complaint is something I share with too many others–there is so much information being placed in our digital inboxes and phone screens, that for me, there are actually days that words on the computer screen actually begin to blur together. Each week as I gather my thoughts before writing this column, I reflect on past messages (often for inspiration) and this time I came across a column I wrote that included observations made after I found an old copy of author Robert Fulghum’s “Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” Considering we recently began accepting registrations for the “Class of 2035,” I decided to revisit my musings to see if there were any insights that I might want to pass along.
As I expected, little has changed since I first wrote that it didn’t take long to find my inspiration–right there on page four of the tired paperback version of that book. “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 eating (and now, in 2021–more often than that.) 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 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 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 clean and firm.”
Wow! The first version of the book was published almost before my age actually hit double digits (1986), and as I read the words, I could almost hear my mom’s or dad’s voice saying them to me, my brothers and sister. Probably a teacher, or two, or three, too. Perhaps the priest at my church, and in truth, maybe even my own voice as I’ve talked to my kids.
In reading both the words in the book and the previous column that I wrote, I found pleasure in the memories, and in the knowledge that the things I most remember from the formative years of my youth–those that most impacted my character, that guided me as I became the man I am today, were modeled for me by the people who made up my world. In reality, they were my teachers–and not all of these teachers were employed in the field of education. I think this still resonates even today. And while I continue to learn, a lot (I hope) on a daily basis, nothing is more important than the basic decency that was taught and modeled during my very first years of life.
I will close again with the thoughts that I shared as I summarized those early lessons–I really don’t know what my message will be to the Class of 2022 on their graduation day in May. And I really don’t know what my message will be to the young members of our Class of 2035 as they begin the first days of their educational journey next fall. This is what I do know– neither group of students will remember the exact words I say on those days. But, it is my most sincere hope that many will remember my efforts to model fairness, to raise their awareness of the wonders of life that surrounds them, and will trust me that warm cookies and cold milk are really good options for almost any situation.
