I was sitting by the indoor lap pool, waiting for a lane to open. (Usually at this pool there are just single swimmers in each lane.) Not more than three minutes passed when a woman in one of the lanes invited me to share her lane. What struck me was not only her unsolicited kindness, but the open-hearted appreciation I felt for hours afterwards, that made me want to return the kindness and pass it to someone else through my actions in some way. Her kindness felt contagious, and I wanted to spread it. Weeks later, I was with my 20-something niece and we stopped in a convenience store off the highway. She was taken by the kindness of one of the workers in the store and had a very similar experience, feeling filled up with warmth by the small kindness of another and a strong desire to express that kindness to others.

In a world where there is so much divisiveness, hate, and negativity, it is reassuring to know that kindness contagion is a real thing. In a 2016 study in Scientific American, researchers found that participants of a study were........

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