“If being terrible at something makes you happy, that’s great. But if somebody cares about you, they’ll ask you to get a lesson. Or give you the advice that takes courage to give,” writes Kindness columnist ANTONIO DI DIO.

My mate Ron used to routinely shatter the hopes and dreams of people he’d never met, and remains to this day one of the loveliest people I’ve known.

No, he’s not an oncologist although they often do similar things and I know plenty of them and they are, frankly, beautiful humans. Especially our local Canberrans. 

Ron is a teacher, writer, bookseller, bon vivant and ponytail-wearing, west-coast import who arrived here 25 years ago looking like a cross between a Beach Boy and a Vonnegut, selling me Captain America comics with a free side order of advice, decency and wisdom. 

He knows more about heartache and joy than most, and very few can match his ability to transpose those complex neuroendocrine brain impulses on to the written page into something quite beautiful. 

Like many of us, life happened to him and plenty of it was challenging, but through it all his grace is remarkable. So what’s with the casual sadism? Nothing of the sort. 

The thing is, Ron used to get roped into helping out at writers’ festivals. Editing, counselling, supporting and teaching – all the good stuff he knew and happily shared. 

But more than rarely, he’d come across punters, like the bloke I spied in the mirror this morning, who work all their lives with a plan to one day Retire and Write, showing him their 300-page experimental novel about Envelopes as a metaphor for life, without using consonants, and… he’d have to come up with something.

Because he was generous and smart, he usually did, but after a while he realised that, for some people, the best thing, the most decent thing to do, was tell the truth. 

Gently, because these people may have spent months on this project and 30 years dreaming of starting it, but the festering whirlpool of assembled pages was being produced by someone who thought they were using their time wisely. 

And their time would be so much better spent doing stuff they might be good at, already, or one day in the future when they practised an activity for which they had some aptitude. 

Ron was inspired once when he saw a fellow who he’d years earlier advised to never write anything but a shopping list, expressing huge thanks. In the interim the chap had developed a different skill at which he was amazing, which gave him and others a lot of joy.

I need to stop here and tell you something right now. The sentiments expressed above should, under no circumstances, encourage you to travel in time and geography to visit my sainted great aunt Emanuela and give her unsolicited feedback about the moustache that was mightier than Ernie Hemingway’s. You would not be helping her and she would give you a fat lip worse than if my wife ever met Mr Wickham after he’d tried to seduce Mr Darcy’s sister. Avoid.

It’s easier to tell uncle Fred that his series of 86 identical watercolours on the Seven Stages of Mucous are fine ONLY if he is a celebrity or really, really rich, than to suggest to him that maybe he will be immensely happier doing something else. 

Of course, if being terrible at something makes you happy (please refer to my cricket career) that’s great. But if somebody cares about you, they’ll ask you to get a lesson. Or give you the advice that takes courage to give.

My wife has mastered the art of saying: “Darling, are you really thinking that might be the best outfit to wear today? Or indeed, any day?” to the extent that it’s welcome. On the other hand, the first time someone asked me if her bum looked big in this, I could have used a few lessons in the Loving Delivery of Data from Ron. 

“Killing your darlings” is a writing philosophy – great writing is editing and removing stuff you love, leaving the best behind. It hurts. I’ve never been good enough to do it. But Ron was, which is why he’s brilliant, whereas my best fiction, like any good Italian boy, remains my tax return.

If you really care, give that extra, gentle feedback. And if you see someone has gone to the effort of delivering you a message, maybe they are not a bugger. Maybe, as one of my amazing team said to me weeks ago, it’s coming from a place of love. I’ll miss my yellow and orange racing car blazer, but Ron might say it was for the best.

Antonio Di Dio is a local GP, medical leader and nerd. There is more of his Kindness on citynews.com.au