All I Really Need to Know, I Learned In Kindergarten. Robert Fulghum

That is a book, one of my faves, and if you haven’t read it, you may find some enjoyment from it. The book is all kinds of passages and short stories about the general lessons that we learn at a very young age and truthfully, those lessons can and should carry us through our lifetime. But they don’t. Why?

Be nice.

Why is this lesson so difficult? The saying goes that the only honest people are young kids and drunks, and that is why kids have to be taught to be nice. They learn how to think before speaking eventually; they learn how to pause. As adults, (unless drunk and without your filter on as we’ve established) we need to be reminded of this. We find it difficult to treat others the way we would like to be treated. How does this happen? Why does this happen?

If you made a mistake, would it be acceptable for someone to call you names and berate them? Then why do we do this to retail workers?

Why, if someone is sitting at a traffic light and for the first nano second of it turning green, they don’t begin to move, they are instantly an asshole and flipped off and horn blown? Why do we so instantly get enraged over something so minuscule?

If your credit card declines, why become insubordinate to the very person alerting you and trying to get it sorted out? Why does it become their problem?

When did we become so entitled? When did we become so angry?

Since when do we blame others for our bad mood/day/week/whatever?

We learned it in kindergarten. Be nice. Be the change you want to see in the world. People will often think that they can’t change the world; they are just one person. Strike that. You CAN change the world. If that seems too much to tackle, change the world to somebody…THAT is something we can all do daily. It starts with just being nice.

If you can’t be nice, please at least be quiet.