“Kindness is so many things. But I never knew that it could involve reassembling all your atoms and becoming whole again, just for one night, to enter the dream of your struggling, sentimental son,” writes Kindness columnist ANTONIO DI DIO.

I got some feedback, almost all great, but a few Could Do Betters.  

It was a 360-degree exercise where team members rate their leader across many questions, and then said leader uses the incredibly valuable information to learn, grow and improve. 

Supremely useful, unless you have the sensitivity of a full-bladdered dog on a croquet lawn and the emotional fragility of your nana’s good Royal Doulton, like me perhaps, and spend the evening having a sook, which I duly did.

I had a sook the day after, too.

I knew that it was affectionate, honest, anonymous and very helpful, but it hurt.

The email from the coach said that lots of people find this challenging and often react with all sorts of emotions, but have a look at your past, your formative years, as to why some of your staff may feel this way about how you react to things, and your answers might be there for a great starting point! 

Well, bugger that – the hard, chiselled chin of Paul Newman in Cat on A Hot Tin Roof spoke to me from memory. Not a damn thing in your youth can explain this – just pick yourself up, figure it out yourself, do better. 

On the second day of sulking I was at the medical practice, it being seeing-patients day, and noted my own increasingly sore toe from a hole-digging accident a couple of days earlier.

Inspection revealed something that looked like my uncle Giuseppe’s four-cheese pizza, but did not smell quite so good, and my pal started me on some antibiotics. That night a fever arose, and possibly a little delirium…

Soon after, I was visiting the parents, and we were laughing and having a fantastic chat about everything and nothing.

Dad had dug out a box of my old school reports. He could not read them, but was proud of the numbers that said my mark and position in the class.

But I could read them, and not having looked at them for decades, it all made sense. There in those faded old ’70s and ’80s papers were carefully handwritten comments from each of my teachers, year after bell-bottomed, pastel-shirted year, that said the same things – eager to please, tries hard, attention span of a flea, always trying to impress mum and dad. Over and over. 

Here was the answer that Ms 360 Feedback person was looking for, that explained my failings (and perhaps some good bits, too). 

It was so interesting to see that young person emerging, and the reasons why that powerful desire to please those lovely, crazy, kind, wonderful people was so strong then and still is.

Dad must have asked me three separate times if there was anything I wanted to chat about, and we had just delighted in Paul Newman sticking it to the mean bloke in Cat on A Hot Tin Roof, and laughing at how neither of us would ever be a decent cowboy (he would have, of course). I said nah, there’s always tomorrow, and headed off to the car, a spring in my step.

Then as I walked further from the house, I got this strange feeling, and almost felt like weeping – that maybe dad wasn’t actually alive. It was so odd. 

I called my wife and she confirmed that yes, your papa has been gone for 20 years and maybe you should come home soon. I hugged my briefcase to my chest and it turned into Rafa the wonder dog as I woke from the dream. 

Wow, those antibiotics were something! And papa was many years gone.

So what had that all been about? Kindness is so many things. But I never knew that it could involve reassembling all your atoms and becoming whole again, just for one night, to enter the dream of your struggling, sentimental son, remind him of forgotten things from youth to explain his troubles, then bugger off back to the big cowboy movie in the sky. Quite a man, my papa.

That Paul Newman flick dad and I loved so much may have involved a fancy big ending where Burl Ives explains to the hero that every bit of self knowledge he ever needed is unlocked by remembering those moments of youth with his father.

Mine was so persistent he came this week with the necessary memories, just when I needed him. 

Local GP and ANU associate professor, Antonio Di Dio says he’s been a bad influence on medical students since the late 1980s.