“Often the kindest thing that people do day in and out involves hidden efforts and invisible love, hidden from – especially from – the beneficiaries,” writes Kindness columnist ANTONIO DI DIO. 

My dad once told me a story about a family back home in the old country. 

It was just after we had seen East of Eden, the Hollywood Steinbeck classic, where dad loved Raymond Massey and the young me was much more interested in the cool younger brother, James Dean. 

Dad began to tell me about these brothers from home, Mario and Gino. Mario was older and more serious. Sometimes he’d be cross with young Gino for not pulling his weight, especially when they were young. 

Their parents were relaxed, as both sons of them seem to contribute very successfully to a thriving family enterprise. 

Funnily enough, quite a few people were inspired by young Gino’s success at being able to run the business, but unlike his brother, always being a pleasure to be around. 

He always seemed to have an apple for the local kids or would light up your smoke as Billy Joel might say. He was just one of those guys who everybody got along with. 

The older Mario, on the other hand, was always serious, and became older fast. 

Gino was so cool in fact that he always had fancy new boots and a wonderful horse he’d share. To my dad, these were marks of greatness. Short of becoming a bishop, there was no greater marker of success on this earth.

Then one day in the 1930s, time passed, and tomorrow arrived. The brothers’ parents got old, and their sisters, as happened in those days, gave up a chunk of their own primes of life to love and care for mum and dad.

Then Mario tragically and suddenly died. This led to an extraordinary change in the younger brother. Almost overnight, according to dad, Gino became exhausted, confused, irritable and in short nothing like the man of ease and calm that he had been all his life.

It turned out, dad relayed, that Gino’s fancy shoes and new Vespa, like everything else in his life, was a consequence not so much of his being an astute business partner, but that his brother Mario had looked after him and done all the work, for their entire shared life. 

Gino had contributed nothing other than being a cheerful friendly sort of fellow, and any schemes he’d brought along over the years had been catastrophes for which Mario had to rescue, while sharing equally in the blame. 

Gino had no idea about the business or pretty much anything to do with how to make a living. In fact, it turns out that even in his 20s his older brother had made the decision that he would carry Gino for his entire life.

Mario knew that his parents’ hearts would be broken if Gino turned out to be a shame and an embarrassment to the family so he did all of his work and all of his brother’s work for his entire adult life. He loved his brother and wished him dignity, and he loved his parents and wanted, above all, for them to be proud of both their sons.

And, said dad, a lot of good actually came from it. For years, hundreds of kids got their apples, or rides on a horse which eventually became a mighty and much loved Vespa. And their fathers may have got a smoke and a laugh, and one boy in particular had his life safe from drowning, and led a wonderful life in a foreign land far away, where he raised beautiful sons of his own and they raised dreamy sleepy sons and brilliant daughters of their own. No good deed goes unpunished.

Funny enough the business Mario had run didn’t go broke either. It got taken over by Gino and Mario’s sisters, who turned out to not be just caring daughters but talented business people themselves. 

Of course, this was the old country, and they had to pretend that it was their husbands running the place (and convince their husbands of the fact, which given the family tradition of loving deception, came easily enough). 

I still don’t know what to make of that story, but I do know that respect and kindness are about so much more than what is visible. 

Often the kindest thing that people do day in and out involves hidden efforts and invisible love, hidden from – especially from – the beneficiaries. 

Mathematicians seeking the kindness formula could do worse than courage multiplied by time. I see it in my beautiful patients, especially the silent army of carers, every day.

Antonio Di Dio is a local GP, medical leader and nerd. There is more of his Kindness on citynews.com.au