“Australia needs to stay one and free, and this will not come from the shapes of our wallets or weapons, but the size of our hearts,” writes Kindness columnist ANTONIO DI DIO.

The most important lessons in life often come without warning, without instructions, and with little attention paid to our carefully crafted plans.

Opportunities, roles, meeting the right person at the wrong time, barbies and babies and bugger all you can control.

Dad had been buffeted by the waves of history through deaths, deprivation, war, prison, poverty and follies of his own but always maintained two things – one, if you laughed and smiled the buggers couldn’t hurt you and two, relentlessly doing right was the best insurance you could ever have. He couldn’t afford many other kinds.

We watched enough John Wayne shows together to know that the tall bloke in the lighter-coloured hat was generally the good guy, especially if he copped a kiss from the rancher’s daughter for shooting the evil dudes in black, especially if it was Maureen O’Hara! 

How were we to know Alan Ladd was even shorter than Tom Cruise – Hollywood lied to us but we didn’t care. It was just too good to see the stubbled bad guys get theirs (ever notice how the good guys, even in Grimy Gulch, population 37 with not a single convenience store to be found, were always impeccably shaved?)

This philosophy was crystallised in Les Miserables, which we occasionally watched on a black-and-white Sunday arvo on a black-and-white TV in a tin-roof country fibro home held together with equal parts asbestos and love.

Dad adored the hero Valjean, and how, once inspired by love and being trusted by the old priest, never again wavered in his following a life of caring for his team, fighting for his workers, defending his adopted daughter, pursuing his dream of living the life he’d been given.

All true and lovely, and when they wrote a musical about it in the ’80s (you may have heard of it – it’s not too shabby) a somewhat wider audience saw this steely pursuit of one’s values against every possible challenge, even Eddie Redmayne’s dodgy high notes.

I saw a beautiful speech by Dr Stephen Kennedy yesterday in which he noted the implacable determination of The Terminator, in which nothing could possibly stand in the way of his programming to find and destroy that which he had to find and destroy. 

And I realised right there, after so many years, that Javert, the French policeman who pursued Valjean in Les Mis for those decades, most recently in a steely eyed Russell Crowe baritone, was both the original Terminator and… a good guy, too. Well, at least in his own mind, and if you define “good” as “possessing integrity”.

Javert doggedly and without pause or pity pursued the man he considered a villain – “I am the law and the law is not mocked,” he advised before a fairly ambitious key change – and his life was devoted to justice.

In another time, another context, his whole life was heroic. He was Elliot Ness or Batman or a relentless modern-day, true-crime podcaster plodding slowly but without stopping, to bring the villain to justice. 

Yet audiences for a couple of hundred years saw Victor Hugo’s point.

Javert’s wholly consistent world view – of justice, the rule of law, fairness, and diligently serving God and country – of doing everything right, was completely wrong because it was without kindness.

One of the key ingredients of kindness is (and I’m sorry, papa, but John Wayne was pretty terrible at this) an ability to see the other person’s point of view.

Our amazing Governor-General, Sam Mostyn, should rule the world for this reason alone, for the many occasions at which she says seeing the other’s point of view is the key that unlocks understanding 2.0 that, in turn, might lead us to peace 3.0, if only we are humble enough, smart enough, vulnerable enough, to let go of dumb simplistic programming 1.0.

Australia needs to stay one and free, and this will not come from the shapes of our wallets or weapons, but the size of our hearts. 

Thirty-five years ago, in a huge youth hostel dormitory in London, I read the 1500th and final page of Les Mis and started weeping. Who wouldn’t?

Thinking I was homesick, the bloke in the bunk below me reached up a hand and in a sweet foreign voice that cut through my ’80s homophobia said: “Does someone need a hug?”

Surreal, yes, but looking back, that guy’s constant attitude of reaching out a loving hand to any scenario will serve humanity better than Clint Eastwood’s guns or Javert’s integrity without kindness that made him what he was.

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