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I remember the first time I learned that treating others with kindness — or as you’d like to be treated — doesn’t mean they will reciprocate. That was on a team building activity camp, just after starting in senior school, aged eleven. Hanging back from joining in with the riotous behaviour of my classmates, I had imagined that if I didn’t join in, I would be spared the violent swinging on my own river crossing, clinging to that two rope bridge.

I was wrong, of course. However, the stark lesson that day came not as I plummeted into the muddy water, but with the treatment of the boy following just after me, who fell hard. Emerging from ditch, his face was all anguish, as he complained that he had hurt his wrist. Seeing him, everyone made fun of him — teachers and students alike — and this continued all weekend as he was forced to take part in every activity, despite expressing evident discomfort.

It was only when he turned up back at school on Monday morning, with his wrist encased in a plaster cast, that we all learnt that he had in fact broken it when he was shaken from the rope bridge two days earlier. In fact, it was a bad fracture which had to be pinned back together with a stainless steel plate and screws. It turned out, that despite being mocked all weekend long, he was actually the bravest of any of us, bearing that excruciating pain regardless.

Over the years that followed, that lesson was reemphasised repeatedly: kindness is not reciprocated with kindness. If anything, being kind was likely to lead to you being derided and bullied by your peers. Teenagers, especially, want to be seen as disobedient rebels, considered cool. Being kind is not cool; rather, it makes you a square, all the more deserving of scorn. If you truly wish to be considered cool, you must cement that narrative by victimising one who has done you no harm at all.

I admit that this lesson was quite hard to fathom. It seemed to fly in the face of logic, completely irrational. But it is what it is. The lesson that life actually taught us was that if you’re a nice person — or believe you’re a nice person — it will be rewarded with total contempt. Far from embracing you, others will take your courteous thoughtfulness as an opportunity to lambast you, whether with words or action. That’s a tough lesson to learn.

How are we to behave then? To forget about being kind altogether? Of course not. In the end, it doesn’t matter how your actions are perceived by others. Be kind anyway. Be kind, not because it benefits you, but because it benefits others. You never know who you will lift up with a singular act of generosity or compassion. You never know whose day you will make, how it might change another’s life, or what chain reaction it may set in motion. Even if the whole world stands against you, be kind anyway.