I’ve had the great opportunity in my life to speak at a lot of conventions in a lot of industries, and, as a result, I’ve been in the green room with Barbara Bush. But my favorite character I ever got to spend a whole dinner with before speaking together on the same stage is someone who I continue to be a fan of today, Robert Fulghum.
This is a guy who for years was a number-one best-selling author and wrote a book called All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten. You can see he signed his book off to me, but I want to read to you what he talks about in the book. He says:
“All these things I learned in kindergarten – 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 dream some and draw some and paint some and sing some 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 hamster 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.”
I loved this man from the minute I met him and his enthusiastic way of addressing life. What a wonderful way to keep it simple—to remember the things we learned in kindergarten.