Editor's Note:
Hey readers, we think you're great!
We wanted to share that kind thought with you because today, November 13, is "World Kindness Day" — created back in 1998 by a consortium of kindhearted charities.
If you're going to celebrate, say organizers, you should do at least one intentional act of kindness. (I don't think it counts if you're kind to yourself, although honestly, it can't hurt!)
For us at Goats and Soda, in addition to sharing a kind thought with our devoted readers, we thought, this is a good opportunity to learn more about kindness — and to find out how acts of kindness can change lives. That's especially critical in a world where cruelty, war and bad news seem omnipresent.
Some hardhearted souls may even question whether small acts of kindness really matter. Spoiler alert: They do!
So … kindly stick with us as we explore … kindness.
Let's start with a simple yet profound story about a snack.
Back in 2004, Maymunah Yusuf Kadiri, a neuro-psychiatrist and mental health advocate in Nigeria, was a young doctor working in the emergency room at the Lagos State University Teaching hospital. One night sticks in her mind. It was chaos. There were accident victims everywhere. She recalls the blood, the cries and her own exhaustion.
"I hadn't eaten for over 12 hours, and my hands were shaking," says Kadiri, who was 28 at the time. "Then an elderly cleaner, one of those invisible heroes in hospitals, walked up to me with a small nylon bag." Inside was a biscuit and a sachet of water.
"Doctor," she said, "you need small strength to save people."
"It sounds simple, but I'll never forget it. That biscuit tasted like hope. Her kindness reminded me that healing isn't only about medicine, it's about humanity," says Kadiri. "As a psychiatrist, I've seen it over and over: People don't just heal in hospitals, they heal in human connections."
And while one isolated act of kindness may seem random, it can lead to much more.
Huguette Diakabana remembers when she had to drop out of school at age 10 — until a mysterious donor came to her rescue. Her family was planning to emigrate to the U.S. from Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) and couldn't afford school fees. They figured she'd make up the year later. She had a different idea: "I put on my previous year's uniform and sat outside under the street window of my would-be classroom." One day, the director invited her inside. Diakabana realized someone must have paid her school fees, but who?
Returning to the school years later, Diakabana discovered it was a school guard. She wanted to repay him. "He told me to help others when I could, so I launched a scholarship program," says Diakabana, who now lives in Switzerland and is co-founder of The Luminous Agency, which focuses on digital literacy.
Dr. Junaid Nabi, a physician-scientist who conducts research in health care technology at the RAND School in Washington, D.C. and is a senior fellow at the Aspen Institute, says he's come to realize that kindness isn't actually a trickle in the ocean. An act of kindness is more like dropping a stone that creates expanding ripples, he says.
"There are studies that illustrate how kindness spreads through social networks in measurable ways. When we are kind to someone, they don't just feel better — they become 25% more likely to help others."
One such investigation described how kindness can be contagious. It was sparked by reports of an outbreak of kindness on a cold December morning in 2012. A stranger picked up the tab for the coffee order of the next customer in the drive-through line at a Tim Hortons coffeehouse in Winnipeg, Canada. And that customer picked up the tab of the person behind him. In the end, 226 customers passed on this act of kindness.
The study authors, citing other examples of "pay it forward" kindness at fast food restaurants and their own experiments encouraging subjects to help others, write: "Why, in the absence of external sanctions and opportunities for reciprocation, do people help strangers? One possible explanation is that helping is driven by receiving or observing help. In other words, generosity towards strangers may be socially contagious."
Says Nabi: Your kindness influences a friend, who influences their friend, who influences their friend. "This creates what is often termed as 'social contagion.'"
It's like a positive feedback loop, Nabi says: Feeling cared for makes you want to care for others. The 2025 World Happiness Report surveyed people from 147 countries. Interviewees spoke a simple truth: Doing something kind with no motive for gain made them feel better.
Nature or nurture?
And where does kindness come from? Are you born with it? Or can you learn to be compassionate and empathetic?
Jeff R. Temple, a professor and psychologist with UTHealth Houston, says kindness is a central thread running through his studies on healthy relationships among adolescents and young adults.
"In our intervention work — including with the Fourth R program and other school-based curricula — we teach adolescents to practice perspective-taking, to express care even during disagreement and recognize the impact of their words and actions. These are essentially the behavioral expressions of kindness." Such kids are less likely to bully others because they know what healthy relationships are like, he says.
A ripple effect
And let's not forget that kindness can change not only the life of the recipient of the kind deed but of the kind person, says Nabi, who offers this anecdote.
In the 2013 Savar building collapse in Bangladesh, where 1,040 garment workers were crushed under concrete. Rescue workers managed to pull out 2,400 people from the rubble two weeks after the collapse. Nabi arrived at the disaster site as a Red Cross volunteer, expecting to gain experience in trauma care. Instead, he says, the experience changed his psyche, teaching him about the nature of true kindness.
"In the midst of chaos, with bodies awaiting identification, kindness came down to being present during others' darkest moments," says Nabi. "I performed CPR on workers I knew wouldn't survive. and when I couldn't save someone, I stayed by their side, holding their hand."
"Before Savar, I was mechanistic, rushing through clinical work like tasks," he recalls. "The image of workers who had embraced each other as concrete crushed them — that final act of human kindness in the face of death — shattered my callousness completely."
When he returned to the hospital, he listened to patients differently, giving them more of his time. He also urges doctors to volunteer for humanitarian causes to practice compassion.
"Kindness, I learned, is about showing up completely for another person's suffering," Navi reflects, "and letting that experience fundamentally change who you are."
So if you began reading this story with the thought that World Kindness Day is … a gimmick … it is a gimmick imbued with heart and hope.
It's a good reminder to practice kindness more, Dr. Kadiri says. "And here's the beautiful part: When someone receives kindness, they don't just feel better, they become better." They may be inspired to perform their own act of kindness. And that, she says, makes the world a kinder, better place too.
Your turn: Readers! Have you ever had a life-changing moment because of an act of kindness. Share your story with us by emailing goatsandsoda@npr.org and we may use it in a follow-up story on kindness.
Special thanks to the photojournalists of The Everyday Projects, who shared their beautiful images of kind moments for this story.
Kamala Thiagarajan is a freelance journalist based in Madurai, Southern India. She reports on global health, science and development and has been published in The New York Times, The British Medical Journal, the BBC, The Guardian and other outlets. You can find her on X @kamal_t
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