I watched White Bird recently, and I expected to be moved by the story. What I didn’t expect was how much one idea would stay with me afterward: kindness can require courage.
The story takes us back to Nazi-occupied France, where Sara, a young Jewish girl, is forced into hiding after her family is taken away. A classmate, Julien, chooses to protect her, even though doing so puts his own life and his family’s lives at tremendous risk. What struck me wasn’t simply that he was kind. It was that he had to make a choice. He could have looked away. He could have told himself that it wasn’t his problem. Instead, he chose to stand beside someone who was being persecuted.
That made me think about how we often talk about kindness as though it is always easy. We imagine kindness as helping someone carry something, buying a coffee for a stranger, checking on a friend, or simply saying something nice. Those things matter, but there are moments when kindness asks something much more difficult from us. It asks us to stand beside someone when doing so is uncomfortable, unpopular, or even frightening.
Not long ago, I was asked a question that brought this idea much closer to home. A Jewish woman asked me, in the context of the antisemitism she was experiencing, whether I would stand by her. It was a simple question, but it carried a lot of weight.
Would I stand by her?
That question stayed with me because it made me realize that kindness isn’t only about what we do when things are easy. Sometimes someone isn’t asking us to solve their problem. They aren’t asking us to have all the answers. They’re simply asking, Will you stand with me?
And I think that is where courage and kindness meet.
We may not always understand another person’s experience. We may not know exactly what to say. But we can listen. We can refuse to participate in hatred. We can speak up when someone is being dehumanized. And we can let someone know they don’t have to face something alone.
That’s one of the lessons I took from White Bird. The film reminds us that hatred can spread when ordinary people decide that someone else’s suffering isn’t their concern. But the opposite is also true. Courage can spread. Kindness can spread. One person choosing to stand beside another can change what happens next.
I’ve experienced this in much smaller ways in my own life. Helping family. Showing up for someone who needs a ride. Listening when someone needs to talk. Spending time with children and remembering how naturally they express love and affection. These things may not feel heroic, but they are opportunities to make another person’s world a little lighter.
And sometimes, we don’t know how much those small acts matter.
There is a line from White Bird that captures this beautifully: “You forget many things in life. But you never forget kindness. Like love, it stays with you forever.”
I think that’s true.
We may forget exactly what someone said. We may forget the circumstances. We may even forget the day it happened. But we remember how someone made us feel when we were vulnerable.
And perhaps that’s the real challenge of kindness.
It’s easy to be kind when there is no cost.
The deeper question is whether we’re willing to be kind when it requires courage.
When someone is being excluded. When someone is being targeted. When speaking up feels uncomfortable. When standing beside another person means stepping outside the safety of simply staying silent.
I don’t think we have to be heroes.
Maybe sometimes we just have to be the person who says, “I’m here. I see you. You’re not alone.“
Because hatred doesn’t only need people who actively participate in it. Sometimes it survives because ordinary people remain silent.
And kindness doesn’t always need a grand gesture either.
Sometimes it begins with simply standing beside someone.