“When some teenager at Macca’s gets your order wrong for one of the adjectives on your frappuccino iced hedgehog chai-fruit tingle, and there’s a growing queue behind you, just smile at the youngster serving you,” says columnist ANTONIO DI DIO. 

IT’S 2001 and this insanely talented bloke, Jim, occupies the next door office. 

Between patients (and between being GP, mayor, pianist, writer, polymath and genius, the bastard) he teaches me Life, starting with an imperious demand I buy an investment property. 

What’s an investment, I ask? In those days of serial pregnancies my salary was directly deposited to the pharmacy in a work-for-nappies program. 

“Buy something small and crap, now, good suburb, off you go”, he said, and munched his home-made sandwich. He had a million investment properties, and worked for love. 

His better received advice to me was that his life was a series of interlocking freeways, wherein people came in and out of your life, for minutes or years. It was up to you what you did as they passed, what you gave and took, your effort. But that’s the same for everybody, I said. No it ain’t, idiot, he said – gently whacking the back of my head – because when they pass by you must think and choose. 

Most of us drift through these encounters subconsciously, which is fine if you’re kind and generous with everyone every minute. But if you’re a normal joe, then you’ll sometimes slip up, and be a complete arse, usually accidentally, and hurt somebody’s feelings just as surely as you’re going to be a bald badger in a year. I remember it often. The baldness reminds me!

My dad used to take me on these five-minute walks to the shops that inevitably took hours. Why you gotta talk to everybody, papa? I’d whine. My boy, he’d say, this is why we’re here! In tragic murder-wracked Sicily he would add – “well you never know when you’re gonna see someone again”. He savoured every moment with every person. 

I’ve seen a bit of death lately. People I’ve loved personally and professionally. Funny word, “professionally”. It means you’re not supposed to hurt when you lose someone you’ve known for 20 years. Bugger that, call me unprofessional. 

Anyway, this is what study taught me, and it’s less than what my mamma and papa learned on the banana patch. Genius Jim knew it, too. When some teenager at Macca’s gets your order wrong for one of the adjectives on your Frappuccino iced hedgehog chai-fruit tingle, and there’s a growing queue behind you, just smile at the youngster serving you. 

Not a harried sarcastic smile as passive aggressive critique. I mean give them a piece of your spare love. You can manufacture more, and if you have limited quantities the practice will do you good. 

I saw a middle-aged man abuse a kid in this context some years ago and it still kills me. Why, you buffoon? Did you mean to do that to an innocent kid guilty of fatigue and incompetence? Will the CEO and shareholders at McDonald’s quiver at your righteous feedback? 

Unless you’re Shirley MacLaine or a cat, we only get one life, and it is a chain of moments, encounters and connections, and until Bezos-Zuckerberg Inc find a way to avoid humans contacting each other altogether, this will persist. Let all those connections be good, kind, fair. Let’s try to remember, if only once a day, that we have this incredible power to make or wreck somebody’s day. I’ve been an absolute bugger, grumpy and horrible, more than once in my workplace, and it haunts me years later. As it should.

Last month I thought of Jim – and called. He said “Maaaate! How are ya? You still have that little property? You sold it, didn’t you?” I said, yes, I exchanged it for some magic beans and a Raiders membership. 

“I know you son, and I knew that’s what you’d do! Was it three months into the GFC?” (this guy really knew me – that’s exactly what I did!!) It’s worth two gazillion now, you clown! And then asked me about my wife and each of my children by name. Wow, I said, how did you remember all that? Same reason you remember all them embarrassing things about me, son, he said (and I did). 

We chatted and laughed at his great financial decisions and my awful ones. So many people walk on and off the stage of our lives. Every one of those encounters is an opportunity. What’s the point of saving the planet if it’s to make each other miserable? 

When the Universe pushes people past you, it might be a harmless hello or a life you change. My parents arrived here to meet snakes and floods and fire. But they also met friendship and generosity and laughter and love from an Australia that I believe lives on in each of our hearts, every tiny moment of humanity knitting a tapestry that makes a rich life worth living. 

Once in a while I get a lovely message from someone who had remembered some moment we’d shared years ago. It’s almost the best feeling ever (nothing can ever beat a patient giving you “Phantom” comics, even if they are Roosters fans!). Hallmark sentimentality perhaps, but as my papa would have said, it’s why we’re here. Make encounters count. Where can you learn such a skill? Watch 10 consecutive people order from a busy barista. You’ll learn a lot about what makes a good human being. 

Antonio Di Dio is a busy GP, serves on the AMA board and council, and is a perpetual advocate who longs to live three doors down from Kogarah Oval, specifically 1956-66 inclusive, although turning up to the Raiders every year has its moments.