Some of us are granted long and layered lives.
Lives filled with love, work, mistakes, second chances, and moments of grace we did not always recognize at the time. We grow old enough to reflect, to revise our understanding of who we were and who we became. We accumulate stories. We are allowed, by fortune or chance, to complete arcs.
Others are not.
Their lives are taken too soon—not through fault, not through choice, not through moral failing. Many are children, still forming their sense of self, still trusting the world to be a place that will hold them. Some are helpless in ways that make the loss even harder to reconcile. And some are not even human, yet feel no less present in the web of life that sustains us all.
These early endings leave holes.
They leave holes in the hearts of those who loved them—parents, partners, friends, companions—who must continue living while carrying an absence that never fully closes. But they also leave holes in the collective psyche. Quiet questions linger long after the ceremonies and condolences fade. Questions about meaning. About fairness. About justice. About whether the universe keeps score, or whether we are simply witnesses to an uneven distribution of time.
When lives are cut short, we are forced to confront a truth we often try to avoid: that longevity is not merit-based. Time is not awarded according to goodness, usefulness, or love. It is not fair in any way we would design if fairness were ours to define.
And yet, here we are—those who remain.
For those of us who have lived long and rich lives, this realization carries an uncomfortable responsibility. Not guilt, but awareness. Not shame, but stewardship. If we have been given time that others were denied, what are we doing with it? Are we using it to deepen compassion, to widen our moral circle, to protect those who are vulnerable—human and nonhuman alike?
Loss has a way of stripping away illusion. It reminds us that life is not primarily about accumulation, status, or certainty. It is about presence. About care. About how we show up for one another while we can.
Perhaps meaning is not found in explaining why some lives end too soon. Perhaps meaning emerges in how we respond to those losses—in how we carry forward the love that no longer has a place to land, in how we refuse to let indifference be the final word.
Justice, in this sense, may not be cosmic or immediate. It may be something far more fragile and human. It may live in our choices: to protect rather than exploit, to remember rather than forget, to act with tenderness in a world that so often feels indifferent.
The holes remain. They always will.
But sometimes, if we are attentive, they become spaces through which deeper empathy enters. And in that quiet opening, life—uneven, imperfect, and precious—asks us not for answers, but for care.
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