Before the Bell Rang ~ What We Forgot After Kindergarten

There’s a famous poster that summarizes the book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.

Simple lessons, really—share everything, play fair, don’t hit people, say sorry, clean up your mess, take a nap when you need one, and hold hands when you cross the street.

It’s almost as though life begins on a gentle slope, surrounded by crayons, kindness, and curiosity—and then, slowly, the hill steepens.

After kindergarten comes the long march:

Years of schooling, higher learning, competition, achievement, status, responsibility, bills, family pressures.

It’s like we were tricked—as if we thought all of school, and all of life, would remain as simple and joyful as that first classroomfilled with laughter, play, and finger paint.

But perhaps the real journey of adulthoodisn’t about accumulating more knowledge or possessions—it’s about finding our way back to that simple wisdom we once knew so naturally.

To play again.

To share again.

To rest when tired.

To tell the truth.

To see the world with wonder.

For many, the return to what we learned in kindergarten—

or what we were lucky enough to experience in a loving home—

is the true journey of life:

coming home to innocence,

to kindness,

to the heart that knew how to love freely before the world taught it to be afraid.