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Random (And Not So Random) Acts of Kindness Are Good for You
In times of pandemic, get over yourself and think of other people — and live healthier and longer (true!)
“The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.” — Carl Jung
Steve Cole, PhD., is a Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry and Biobehavioural Sciences in the UCLA School of Medicine. (And no, that’s not him in the photo.) We are due to talk over Zoom, although he has warned me that his bandwidth in California is probably worse than Tenzin Palmo’s at her nunnery in North India.
As it turns out, our only technical glitch is entirely of my making. Unusually, I had turned off the sound on my laptop with the intention of writing uninterrupted, and forgot to turn it on again for our call. So I logged onto my Zoom room, saw nobody else there so figured Steve was still getting online, so wandered over to another window to do email, expecting to hear Zoom ping when he checked in. At four minutes past the hour, I was getting concerned, so checked my messages — to find an email saying he could see me, but I didn’t seem to be able to hear him.
If there is one thing worse than being unwittingly watched, it is being unwittingly watched by a behavioural scientist.
