I am writing this to myself, because the person I fear I’m becoming is watching closely.
The news of Charlie Kirk’s death didn’t sadden me. My first reaction was colder, sharper—a quiet, unsettling sense of irony. It was the easy response, the one that required nothing of me but a cynical shrug. It felt like a victory for my side. And that is what terrified me.
Because just a week earlier, a different death in the Pasifika, reflected my own hypocrisy back at me. In Fiji, Dr. Isireli Biumaitotoya—a beloved, controversial, and vibrant transgender known as Leli Darling—was murdered. The social media response was not grief, but a grotesque eruption of hate, a chorus of bigotry celebrating the silencing of a voice that dared to live openly.
Two deaths. Two ideologies. One identical, chilling failure of humanity. And I felt it in myself.
This is my uncomfortable truth: my initial instinct was not compassion. It was tribalism. It was to perform a crude calculus of grief, to measure the value of a life based on its political utility. To see a point on a scoreboard, not a shattered family.
I am writing to fight that instinct. I am writing to choose the harder path.
To the family and friends of Charlie Kirk: Your grief is real. To dismiss your pain as an acceptable casualty in a culture war would be to commit the very sin of dehumanization I claim to oppose. To love people who loved him means I must honor the weight you carry. I choose your humanity.
To the memory of Leli Darling and her grieving mother: Your humanity was attacked twice—first by violence, then by a torrent of cruel words that shame our species. To remain silent in the face of that hatred would be a betrayal of everything I believe. I choose to condemn that poison unconditionally.
This is the unforgivable choice we are forced to make in a broken world: to hold two crushing truths at once.
- Truth One: A complex, imperfect human being is gone, and a circle of love around them has been shattered.
- Truth Two: The ideas they championed have real and often devastating consequences.
To ignore the first truth is to become the cold, cruel monster you oppose. To ignore the second is to be a naive bystander to harm. The only way through is to stand in the painful, dizzying space between them.
So this is my challenge to you, and my note to my future self:
The next time a polarizing figure falls, pause. Breathe. Before you share, before you comment, before you let that wave of tribal satisfaction wash over you, ask:
- Do my words widen the rift or help stitch it closed?
- Am I arguing against a deadly idea, or am I celebrating the death of a person?
- Does my reaction make violence more or less likely?
We are sliding into a world where our digital rage licenses real-world cruelty. We are becoming mirror images of our enemies, arguing against hate with hate.
The world does not need more soldiers in this war. It needs healers. It needs people brave enough to do the hardest work: to see a human behind the label of “enemy,” and to choose empathy, not because it is easy, but because it is the only thing left that can save us from ourselves.
I am trying to build a soul that is a refuge, not a weapon. This is the mirror I choose to look into.
Which will you choose?
Pasifika Talanoa by a traveled ITaukei Fijian 