Distilled Wisdom

The ability to reduce profound ideas to simple statements requires great wisdom. The Unitarian clergyman, Robert Fulghum, became famous because of his essay, “Everything I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” He suggests that the simple rules learned in kindergarten will do for life. Rules like: Share everything.

Play fair. Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess.

Flush. Remember that warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. When Ernest Hemingway graduated from high school his parents wanted him to go to college, but he left home instead to take a job with the Kansas City Star as a cub reporter.

His editor told him to use short sentences, avoid slang, speak plainly, and shy away from adjectives. Hemingway later said that those were “the best rules I ever learnt for the business of writing.”

Using them, he became one of the best writers of the twentieth century. The ability to distill profound subjects into a handful of simple, easy-toremember rules is a mark of profound wisdom. Consider, then, how profoundly wise is Almighty God-for he reduced all our obligations and responsibilities in life to ten simple rules called the Ten Commandments.

Those ten can be further reduced 1 Trueblood, Foundations for Reconstruction, 8-10. into two: Love God and love your neighbor. The two can then be summarized into one four-letter word: Love.