Kindness: it’s communicable

I remember June Callwood’s visit to Banff in the mid ’90’s. She was speaking at The Whyte Museum one evening and is the first public figure who impressed on me with absolute clarity: kindness is a strength, and a powerful force. She was a prolific journalist, a “secular saint, a relentless fundraiser, a civic activist, and a fierce campaigner for human rights.”

A very proud Canadian, Ms. Callwood died in 2007 after losing her battle with cancer.  In her final public interview, six months before her death, George Stroumboulopoulos asks Ms. Callwood if she believes in God.

She replied, “I believe in kindness,” and after a deep inhale, adds, “I believe it’s very communicable. Just as meanness is too. But, kindness is much more powerful.” Ms. Callwood then told stories of acts of kindness seen on the streets of Toronto, as simple and profound as people holding doors open for each other.

In another article published by The Globe and Mail at the time of Ms. Callwood’s death, she remembers being in a small plane, … gliding over Georgian Bay, contemplating all the pain she had experienced in her life and wondering whether there was “anything spiritual” that could help ease her misery.

“And I thought, floating up there, ‘This is what it’s all about. It’s kindness. Not top-down kindness, giving a Toonie to a street person and treating them like a slot machine, but stopping and talking to them. If people can behave well to each other, that’s all that there is.”

Kindness was Ms. Callwood’s clear-eyed conclusion to everything her rich life delivered.

Since then psychologists and social scientists have researched and confirmed that kindness and happiness are social contagions.

Time to spread some good stuff – wide and far. With a fierce and confident June Callwood Canadian conviction.