I’m sure everyone knows that the Dalai Lama says his religion is kindness. But you may not know it’s highly contagious, kindness (so is meanness, for that matter, but we aren’t going there).

The graphic shows what happened, in a research study, when people were kind/ generous in a game. Over the next rounds of play, the kindness spread. How cool is that?? And what would happen if each of us tried, in the course of our ordinary days, to be kinder?

It’s not a new study — three years old. But it’s a new concept to far too many of us. That kindness is contagious. That each of us — the ‘one person’ making a difference we always hear of — can start a chain of good.

So let’s pretend that kindness is the chicken pox. Remember how your mother took you to catch it? Or maybe you were the parent who took your own child to get it over with. Do someone a random act of kindness. Infect them. We’ll all be the better for it.