Check out George Saunders’s graduation speech to the students of Syracuse University, where he is a professor.

It’s rife with exhortations to kindness and references to monkey-borne illnesses. You know, the usual.

So here’s something I know to be true, although it’s a little corny, and I don’t quite know what to do with it: What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded…sensibly.