On Monday, a 13-year-old boy was presented with the John Paul XIII award by his best friend, another boy his age with special needs.

The story revolves around Dylan Muscat and Kyle Agius, two young teenagers who have been friends since primary school. Kyle has communication difficulties, but Dylan and he are best mates, with the later helping him out where needs be.

It turns out that Dylan was accepted into Church secondary school, but after reflecting and discussing with his family (amazing for a 13-year-old), he decided to stay put because Kyle would be left on his own.

What an amazing story. What incredible empathy and what incredible selflessness. Malta has become a modern country and has paid the price of progress where morals and values have shifted more towards the ‘me’ rather than ‘someone else’. We see it in every facet of our hustle and bustle everyday lives. “Should we stop to offer a hand? No, I can’t because I’ll be late for that meeting.” We see it with migrants and their integration and the way they are treated by some employers. We even  see it in our families as materialism becomes more and more rampant.

But yet here, we see a boy, barely into his teens, who has placed a value on friendship which is priceless. We all ought to sit up and take note. By and large, we are still a caring society. Our responses to call for donations to charitable institutions, as well as our participation in mass events to raise funds. We also see Maltese generosity when tragedies strike, such as tsunamis and earthquakes.

We have also seen Maltese generosity at its peak when people risked life and limb to ferry aid into Misurata during the 2011 uprising against Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.

But what about our generosity in everyday life? If we pause to reflect on what we have done during the day, are there instances where we ought to have listened more? Given someone more time? Paid a visit to an ageing relative? Helped a mate out if they needed it? The answer would probably be yes and if we applied those questions to every day of our lives, we would probably answer in the affirmative each and every time.

This boy deserves the award he has been given. But more than anything, we should celebrate the spirit of the award and the circumstances around it. We are a conscientious society – in most things – but perhaps we need to realign our personal moral compasses. Stories such as these are inspiring, and while it is good to sit up and take notice of them, we should not just forget and get on with it as if nothing happened. It often takes the innocence of youth to alert us to something, and this is one such case.

One hopes that these boys will grow up to be fine young men and that there bond will strengthen with time.