Before flying back from Vegas last week, I watched something at the gate that made my blood pressure spike.
A Frontier Airlines gate attendant called a confused passenger an “idiot.” Not under her breath. Not implied. She just straight-up called this guy an idiot because he didn’t know the gate had changed. Customer service has been circling the drain for years, but this was something else entirely. This was a person, wearing a name badge representing a company, publicly humiliating a paying customer over a gate change that the airline made.
When did treating people like garbage become acceptable? When did we collectively decide that basic human decency was optional?
I was pissed. Anyone would be. But what happened next is why I’m writing this.
The guy who got called an idiot ended up sitting next to me on the flight. So I asked him the obvious question: “Did you get that attendant’s name? Are you going to report them?”
He had the name. He had witnesses. He had every right to make that phone call and probably get someone fired or seriously disciplined. He held all the power in that moment.
And he chose not to use it.
“I’m not going to report him,” he said. “It could ruin his life.”
Let that sit for a second. Here’s a guy who just got publicly humiliated in front of a crowded gate area, and his first thought isn’t revenge. It’s about the other person’s mortgage. Their kids. Whatever bad day led to that ugly moment.
He told me he’d rather go home and tell his young daughter how he handled the situation with kindness instead of retaliation. He wanted to teach her what real strength looks like, not by destroying someone, but by being powerful enough to absorb an insult and not need to fire back.
That’s not weakness. That’s the kind of strength most people can’t even imagine.
Look, I get it. We live in a world where everyone’s ready to record, report, and ruin each other over every slight. Social media has turned righteous anger into a spectator sport. Someone wrongs you? Blast them online. Get the mob involved. Watch them burn.
And sometimes that’s warranted. I’m not saying people should accept abuse and smile about it.
But this passenger understood something most people miss: destroying someone’s livelihood over one bad moment doesn’t fix anything. It just adds to the pile of broken things.
Any asshole can be cynical. It’s the default setting. Any coward can be cruel—it requires zero courage. But choosing empathy when you’ve just been publicly disrespected? When you have every justification for revenge? That takes serious power.
Here’s a short excerpt from Chapter 12 of Brave & Boundless, “Be a Bridge”:
Think about the strength that takes. He had every right to file that complaint. He had the attendant’s name, witnesses, probably could’ve gotten them fired or at least seriously disciplined. He held all the power in that moment. And he chose kindness. Not because he was weak. Not because he was afraid of confrontation. But because he was strong enough to absorb the insult without needing to destroy someone in return. He was powerful enough to consider that maybe the gate attendant was going through something terrible. He was secure enough in himself that being called an idiot by a stranger didn’t require retaliation.
In a world that keeps handing us reasons to be cruel, choosing kindness is an act of rebellion. Not the soft, performative niceness we see plastered all over Instagram. Not the fake politeness that masks contempt. Real, deliberate kindness that comes from strength—from the understanding that we’re all struggling and we don’t need to add to each other’s burden.
That passenger on my flight didn’t just avoid ruining someone’s career. He gave his daughter a story about what it looks like to hold power and not weaponize it.
That’s the kind of lesson that changes a family for generations.
Be brave enough to be kind when it costs you something. That’s where boundless starts.
