All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum Page A
Authors: Robert Fulghum
Tags: Fiction
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three children.
The treasures of King Tut are nothing in the face of this.
Have you got something around the house like a gummy lump? Evidence of love in its most uncomplicated and most trustworthy state? You may live a long, long time. You may receive gifts of great value and beauty. You may experience much love. But you will never believe in it quite as much as you believe in the gummy lump. It makes your world go round and the ride worth the trouble.
The three children are grown up now. They still love me, though it’s harder sometimes to get direct evidence. And it’s love that’s complicated by age and knowledge and confusing values. Love, to be sure. But not simple. Not something you could put in a shoebox.
This sticky icon sits on a shelf at the top of my closet. Nobody else knows it’s there. But I do. It is a talisman, a kind of cairn to memory, and I think about it every morning as I dress. Once in a while I take it down from the shelf and open it. It is something I can touch and hold and believe in, especially when love gets difficult and there are no small arms around my neck anymore.
Oh, sure, this is the worst kind of simpleminded, heartrending Daddy-drivel imaginable. I’ve probably embarrassed us both by telling you. But its beats hell out of a mood ring or a mantra or a rabbit’s foot when it comes to comfort.
I have no apology. The gummy lump stands for my kind of love. Bury it with me.
I want to take it with me as far as I go.
M OTHER T ERESA
She died in 1997.
And this essay was written twenty years ago.
I removed it from the new manuscript, thinking the sentiments were shop-worn, the events out of date, and Mother Teresa a fading memory. So, you may well ask, why is the essay included here?
Seeing it in the reject pile troubled me. I read it several times again. And I realized the essay was not about Mother Teresa so much as it was about me and all those who try to resolve the inner conflict between self-interest and self-sacrifice. Trying to care about Me and care about Them and care about Us at the same time is an ongoing bewilderment.
T HERE WAS A PERSON who profoundly disturbed my peace of mind for a long time. She didn’t know me, but she went around minding my business. We had very little in common. She was an old woman, an Albanian who grew up in Yugoslavia; she was a Roman Catholic nun who lived in poverty in India. I disagreed with her on fundamental issues of population control, the place of women in the world and in the church, and I was turned off by her naïve statements about “what God wants.” People who claim to speak for God do more harm than good, if you ask me. She and her followers drove me crazy. They seemed so pious and self-righteous. I got upset every time I heard her name or read her words or saw her face. I didn’t even want to talk about her. Who the hell did she think she was, anyhow?
However. In the studio where I used to work, there was a sink. Above the sink was a mirror. I stopped at this place several times each day to tidy up and look at myself in the mirror. Alongside the mirror was a photograph of the troublesome old woman. Each time I looked in the mirror at myself, I also looked at her face. In it I have seen more than I can tell; and from what I saw, I understood more than I can say. I could not get her out of my mind or life.
That photograph was taken in Oslo, Norway, on the tenth of December, in 1980. This is what happened there: The small, stooped woman in a faded blue and white sari and worn sandals received an award. From the hand of a king. An award funded from the will of the inventor of dynamite. In a great glittering hall of velvet and gold and crystal. Surrounded by the noble and famous in formal black-tie and elegant gowns. The rich, the powerful, the brilliant, the talented of the world in attendance. And there—at the center of it all—this little old lady in sari and sandals. Mother Teresa, of India.
The treasures of King Tut are nothing in the face of this.
Have you got something around the house like a gummy lump? Evidence of love in its most uncomplicated and most trustworthy state? You may live a long, long time. You may receive gifts of great value and beauty. You may experience much love. But you will never believe in it quite as much as you believe in the gummy lump. It makes your world go round and the ride worth the trouble.
The three children are grown up now. They still love me, though it’s harder sometimes to get direct evidence. And it’s love that’s complicated by age and knowledge and confusing values. Love, to be sure. But not simple. Not something you could put in a shoebox.
This sticky icon sits on a shelf at the top of my closet. Nobody else knows it’s there. But I do. It is a talisman, a kind of cairn to memory, and I think about it every morning as I dress. Once in a while I take it down from the shelf and open it. It is something I can touch and hold and believe in, especially when love gets difficult and there are no small arms around my neck anymore.
Oh, sure, this is the worst kind of simpleminded, heartrending Daddy-drivel imaginable. I’ve probably embarrassed us both by telling you. But its beats hell out of a mood ring or a mantra or a rabbit’s foot when it comes to comfort.
I have no apology. The gummy lump stands for my kind of love. Bury it with me.
I want to take it with me as far as I go.
M OTHER T ERESA
She died in 1997.
And this essay was written twenty years ago.
I removed it from the new manuscript, thinking the sentiments were shop-worn, the events out of date, and Mother Teresa a fading memory. So, you may well ask, why is the essay included here?
Seeing it in the reject pile troubled me. I read it several times again. And I realized the essay was not about Mother Teresa so much as it was about me and all those who try to resolve the inner conflict between self-interest and self-sacrifice. Trying to care about Me and care about Them and care about Us at the same time is an ongoing bewilderment.
T HERE WAS A PERSON who profoundly disturbed my peace of mind for a long time. She didn’t know me, but she went around minding my business. We had very little in common. She was an old woman, an Albanian who grew up in Yugoslavia; she was a Roman Catholic nun who lived in poverty in India. I disagreed with her on fundamental issues of population control, the place of women in the world and in the church, and I was turned off by her naïve statements about “what God wants.” People who claim to speak for God do more harm than good, if you ask me. She and her followers drove me crazy. They seemed so pious and self-righteous. I got upset every time I heard her name or read her words or saw her face. I didn’t even want to talk about her. Who the hell did she think she was, anyhow?
However. In the studio where I used to work, there was a sink. Above the sink was a mirror. I stopped at this place several times each day to tidy up and look at myself in the mirror. Alongside the mirror was a photograph of the troublesome old woman. Each time I looked in the mirror at myself, I also looked at her face. In it I have seen more than I can tell; and from what I saw, I understood more than I can say. I could not get her out of my mind or life.
That photograph was taken in Oslo, Norway, on the tenth of December, in 1980. This is what happened there: The small, stooped woman in a faded blue and white sari and worn sandals received an award. From the hand of a king. An award funded from the will of the inventor of dynamite. In a great glittering hall of velvet and gold and crystal. Surrounded by the noble and famous in formal black-tie and elegant gowns. The rich, the powerful, the brilliant, the talented of the world in attendance. And there—at the center of it all—this little old lady in sari and sandals. Mother Teresa, of India.
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