Sticking up for someone when it’s unpopular is how you find out what you’re made of.

Being decent is easy when the whole room agrees with you. The test is the moment it costs something: a bit of standing, a friendship that cools, an afternoon spent on the wrong side of a joke. What you do in those ten seconds tells you more about yourself than a year of good intentions ever will.

No speech is required. Changing the subject, sitting down next to someone, saying that is enough in a flat voice, texting them later: any of it counts. Small interruptions work, and the person on the receiving end remembers exactly who did anything at all.