The Importance of Kindness (a reminder for us all)
This short is an animated adaptation of a commencement speech given by George Saunders at Syracuse University, May 2013. It’s meant to serve as a promotional trailer for his book, ‘Congratulations, by the way: Some Thoughts on Kindness’, but it’s a wonderful teaser that adds a dimension of warmth to the author’s enlightened words:
Produced By: Above Average // Adapted By: Tim Bierbaum // Video Created by Serious Lunch // Narration by George Saunders // Illustrated by Tim Bierbaum // Above Average Producer: Celeste Ballard // Music by Michael Camenti provided by The Music Bed
With his gentle wisdom and disarming warmth, Saunders manages to dissolve some of our most deeply engrained culturally conditioned cynicism into a soft and expansive awareness of the greatest gift one human being can give another — those sacred exchanges that take place in a moment of time, often mundane and fleeting, but echo across a lifetime with inextinguishable luminosity.
“What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.” ~ George Saunders
“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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