Robert Fulghum

Robert Fulghum engages with musings on life, death, love, pain, joy, sorrow, and the best chicken-fried steak in the continental United States. The little seed in the Styrofoam cup offers a reminder about our own mortality and the delicate nature of life . . . a spider who catches (and loses) a full-grown woman in its web one fine morning teaches us about surviving catastrophe . . . the love story of Jean-Francois Pilatre and his hot-air balloon reminds us to be brave and unafraid to show more “fly” . . . life lessons hidden in the laundry pile . . . magical qualities found in a box of crayons . . . hide-and-seek vs. sardines—and how these games relate to the nature of God. All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten is brimming with the very stuff of life and the significance found in the smallest details. show less

1990 Jul 30

Fulghum is chock full of advice on how to be a decent person and enjoy your life.

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2020 June 6

This was an excellent choice for me right now. I needed some positivity. And very short essays ate so doable, even when I have the attention span of a litter of 10 week old puppies. There have been many distracting events of late. Sometimes real life doesn't feel so real when you are living through multiple history-making events simultaneously.
I am, and want to remain, grateful to the show more Fulghum of thirty years ago, and the many voices on Twitter, at work, and on the steps of my local courthouse, all telling me not just what I know, that I need to do better, but what is more important to me at the moment: how to do better.
I know that Black Lives Matter, that policing in the United States is institutionalized racism, that the criminal justice system in the US is institutionalized racism, that our two-party political system is institutionalized racism, that in fact every system established in the US since the first colonizers arrived is just more institutionalized racism: from the privately-owned hospitals where more proportionally more Black women and infants die, through to the end, when cancer or COVID-19 disproportionately kills more, and younger, Black people.
It's racism all the way down.
I know it, I have almost always known it, but other than educating myself, supporting efforts to increase diversity in books and publishing, and voting always for the lesser of two evils, I haven't ever managed to do much else.
I must do better, and more, always.
I want to live in a country which is good, and just, and kind. So I had better get to work: there is so damn much to get done. show less

Most nights, I lie down on the couch and read a bit of Fulghum at bedtime, to go to sleep with a smile on my face. As in all his books, some essays hit closer to home than others. But one story in this book had me laughing so hard I nearly fell off the couch. That essay alone was worth the 5 stars. His books are a good antidote to the others I read, which are probably too scary or depressing. So I balance those with Robert Fulghum's witty observations of life. He's a gem!

I read this book long ago, when I was in high school. I remember thinking it was a really deep, important book at the time. On re-reading it in adulthood, I no longer think it is either deep or important.

There is a sort of smug satisfaction cloaked in humility in a lot of these very short essays about life, and they now feel like someone who is trying to seem wise, rather than someone who is wise.

But, there is definite value to be found in this book. I especially like his idea that we show more shouldn't bother searching for the meaning of life, and instead should be looking, all the time, to find the meaning in life.

Perhaps this book is best enjoyed by dipping into it here and there, rather than reading it from start to finish in a short period of time. show less