Why Goodness Makes Us Cry

What Netflix’s Little House on the Prairie is reminding me about belonging, compassionate leadership, and the kind of world we are still trying to build

PHOTO CREDIT: NETFLIX

I have cried while watching television before.

A beloved character dies. The underdog wins. Someone finds their way home.

But I have never experienced anything quite like this.

While watching Netflix’s new Little House on the Prairie, I find myself sobbing. Not once or only at the end of an especially emotional episode, but every time I watch.

The strangest part is that I am often not crying because something sad has happened.

I am crying when someone chooses kindness, when a family makes room for another person, or when a neighbor quietly shows up in a moment of need. I cry when someone who has been judged, overlooked, or pushed aside is finally treated as if they matter.

I cry when compassion wins, forgiveness is offered, or one human being simply sees the humanity in another.

These moments completely undo me.

This morning after watching a new episode I asked myself:

What are my tears trying to tell me?

Little House on the Prairie has been part of my life for as long as I can remember.

I grew up watching the original television series in the 1970s and ’80s. It was one of my absolute favorites. While the show was still on the air, I discovered Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books and read and reread them until the characters, families, and places felt almost familiar.

My mother loved the books too, and even now, decades later, I still have the original collection I read as a boy.

So, when this new adaptation arrived, I was not simply tuning in to see what Netflix had done with an old story. I was returning to something that had quietly traveled with me for most of my life.

I expected nostalgia, but I did not expect recognition.

The more I sat with my reaction, the more I realized I was not simply responding to the story on the screen. I was responding to the ideals it kept placing in front of me.

Love. Belonging. Kindheartedness. Generosity. Compassion for our fellow human beings.

The belief that every person has dignity, that we have a responsibility to one another, and that communities and cultures become stronger when people choose not merely to look after themselves, but to notice, include, protect, and care for those around them.

For the past several months, I have been writing about many of these same ideas.

I have written about hiding and the courage to be seen, dignity and belonging, and the people who entered my life at exactly the right moments and helped shape who I would become. I have also written about our responsibility to become that kind of person for someone else.

At first, those essays may have seemed like separate conversations, but now I am not so sure.

I think they are all asking the same question:

What becomes possible when we treat people as if they truly matter?

That is the question Little House returns to again and again.

It does not depict a perfect world.

Life is difficult. People face illness, hunger, loss, fear, prejudice, loneliness, uncertainty, and disappointment. Families struggle. Communities fail. People behave selfishly, and some act with cruelty.

But in the middle of that hardship, human beings are repeatedly confronted with a choice.

Will I protect only myself, or will I make room for someone else?Will I judge this person, or will I try to understand them?Will I look away from their pain, or will I move toward it?Will I allow fear to determine who belongs?Will I treat another person’s struggle as none of my concern?

Again and again, someone chooses love. Someone stays, helps, forgives, speaks up, or recognizes worth in a person others have dismissed.

I think that may be part of why I cry.

We have become so accustomed to stories built around conflict, outrage, ambition, cynicism, cruelty, and division that uncomplicated goodness can feel almost startling.

Kindness catches us off guard. Grace feels radical. Compassion can seem extraordinary.

Not because these qualities are weak or naive, but because we know how much courage they often require.

It is easy to care when caring costs us nothing, but it is harder when kindness demands time, inconvenience, patience, humility, or sacrifice.

It is easy to welcome people who are familiar to us, but it is harder when someone’s story, identity, pain, or way of moving through the world challenges what we understand.

It is easy to speak about compassion in the abstract, but it is harder to practice it when another person has disappointed us, frustrated us, failed us, or made a mistake.

That is the goodness that moves me most. It is not sweetness or sentimentality. It is choice. It is the decision to remain human in circumstances that might make it easier not to be.

There is a name for at least part of what I am experiencing.

Researchers sometimes refer to it as moral elevation, the emotion we feel when we witness acts of courage, generosity, compassion, or selflessness. It can bring tears, warmth, chills, and a renewed desire to become better ourselves.

That description resonates with me, but I think there is something else mixed into my tears too.

Grief.

Not necessarily grief for the past or for some idealized version of life on the prairie. Neither the books nor the television series suggests that life was somehow simpler, fairer, or more humane then.

The grief may be for how hungry we have become for visible evidence of goodness now.

We are hungry for people who choose one another, communities where someone notices when a neighbor is struggling, adults who teach children that character matters as much as achievement, and leaders who understand that strength and tenderness are not opposites.

We are hungry for the belief that no human being is disposable.

Perhaps I am crying because these moments remind me of a world I still long for and sometimes worry we are losing.

Perhaps I am also crying because they remind me that we have not lost it completely.

Goodness is still available to us. Compassion remains a choice. Belonging can still be created, and people can still surprise one another with grace.

That realization brings me directly to my work.

I spend much of my life helping leaders and organizations practice compassionate leadership by creating cultures where people feel trusted, valued, included, and inspired to contribute.

On the surface, that may seem far removed from a family trying to build a life on the American frontier, but it is not.

Workplaces are communities too.

They are places where people decide every day whether it is safe to speak, whether their contribution matters, whether mistakes will become opportunities for growth or reasons for shame, whether difference will be welcomed or merely tolerated, and whether the people around them will notice when they are struggling.

The organizations where people flourish are built through many of the same choices.

People notice one another. They make room for different voices and experiences. They tell the truth with care, practice accountability without stripping people of dignity, and extend grace without abandoning standards.

They believe every person has something meaningful to contribute.

They do not force people to earn their humanity through performance.

They create belonging, not as a reward for fitting in, but as a condition that allows people to participate fully.

These are not soft ideals surrounding the real work. They are the real work.

Trust shapes whether people speak. Belonging shapes whether they contribute.

Compassion shapes how people respond when someone struggles. Dignity shapes whether people experience work as a place where they are merely used or a place where they are genuinely valued.

Culture is not created primarily through the words hanging on a wall. It is created through repeated human choices.

Who do we notice? Who do we welcome? Who do we listen to and defend? What happens when someone disappoints us? What are we willing to risk, change, or sacrifice for one another?

The answers to those questions shape every workplace, family, and community.

Perhaps that is why this new adaptation is affecting me so deeply.

It connects the boy who watched the original series and read those books again and again in rural Illinois with the man I eventually became.

I could not have known then that I would spend my career thinking about experience, culture, leadership, and belonging. I could not have known that I would one day help organizations examine how people feel inside the systems they create.

I certainly could not have known that the collection of books I carried with me all these years may have been teaching me something about that work long before I had language for it.

They taught me to see the person others overlook, make room at the table, and help when helping is inconvenient. They taught me that kindness is not weakness, every human being deserves dignity, and communities become stronger when people understand their responsibility to one another.

Maybe I am not simply revisiting a story I loved as a child.

Maybe I am recognizing one of the places where my deepest beliefs first took root.

These stories may have helped shape my moral imagination. They offered an early picture of the kind of human being I hoped to become and the kind of community I hoped to belong to.

A place where people showed up for one another, and where worth was not determined by wealth, status, productivity, popularity, or power. A place where struggle did not disqualify someone from love, and where goodness was not always easy, but was still worth choosing.

Decades later, I realize I may have spent much of my life trying to help build modern versions of that community in workplaces, teams, classrooms, leadership conversations, the stories I tell, and the moments when someone needs another person to remind them that they matter.

Underneath all our titles, technologies, politics, deadlines, and differences, most of us are still searching for the same things.

We want to be loved, to belong, and to know that we matter. We want to believe that someone will see us, stay with us, and choose us, especially on the days when we feel least deserving of it.

That is true in our homes, workplaces, and communities. It is true in the world we are creating together, whether we realize it or not.

I do not think I am crying because Netflix’s Little House on the Prairie is taking me back to the past.

I think I am crying because it is reminding me what I believe, what I am hungry for, what first shaped me, and what I have spent my life trying to help build for the future.

A world with more kindness, courage, belonging, and compassion.

A world with more people willing to see the humanity in one another and act accordingly.

Stories like these do not simply entertain us.

Sometimes, they return us to ourselves.

And sometimes, our tears are simply the evidence that we have recognized home.

If this essay resonated with you, I'd be grateful if you'd share it with your friends and colleagues. And if it sparked a thought or reminded you of someone who helped shape your life, I'd love to hear about it in the comments below.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kevin Finke is a human-centered leadership practitioner, consultant, and founder of Experience Willow. Through his writing and work, he helps leaders create the conditions where people feel seen, valued, connected, and able to do their best work. He believes that when we get the human experience right, performance follows.