Three
souls who reminded us what it means to live fully, and what we can’t afford to
lose.
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A friend texted me yesterday. Just two
words and a crying emoji: “Diane Keaton.” I went to the internet right away,
hoping with everything I had that it wasn’t true. But there it was. The
headline. The confirmation. And it took my breath away.
I was already feeling low, already
scanning the horizon for some small sign of goodness, already feeling
untethered from joy, floating a little listless in the dark. Lately, I’ve been
feeling like there was no light left in the world. I’m not gonna lie, that
feeling’s been sitting heavy on me lately, heavier than usual, like the air
itself is carrying too much grief, like even the wind has forgotten how to move
softly. The days blur together in shades of gray and it starts to feel like
maybe the ache is permanent, like maybe this is just how it is now, this quiet
collective mourning we never had time to name.
I felt this way when Redford died, and
then again when Goodall died. Each one compounded the last. So when I read
those words yesterday, it just felt like too much. Too much loss. Too much
light gone out all at once. That makes three in less than a month.
And then it started to ripple through
group chats and text threads and phone calls. Friends sharing their favorite
scenes and quotes. Clips from Annie Hall and Baby Boom and Something’s Gotta
Give. People sending the same sentence over and over again: “I feel like I knew
her.”
Because we did.
That was her magic. Diane Keaton had
this uncanny way of dissolving the space between herself and the rest of us.
She didn’t pretend life was neat. She lived it as it was, messy, hilarious,
hopeful, undone. She owned every quirk and imperfection, every burst of
laughter that arrived too early, every tremor of vulnerability. She was never
trying to be perfect. She was trying to be real. She WAS real.
And that’s why we trusted her.
She made being human look like
something worth celebrating. She let us see her in all her contradictions, and
in that, she made us feel seen too. She made the mess beautiful.
And now she’s gone. And it feels like
something in the world just dimmed.
And she makes three.
Robert Redford. Jane Goodall. Diane
Keaton.
Three souls who carried light
differently but toward the same purpose. Three people who embodied what we
could be if we chose love over hate, connection over cruelty, and hope over
fear.
Their deaths have felt like watching
the last campfires go out in the distance. And I keep finding myself asking,
quietly, who tends the flame now.
I sat with that grief. I let it
linger. I let it ache. And somewhere in it, something shifted. I realized that
maybe the reason their deaths hit so hard isn’t just because of who they were,
but because of what they represented. They were proof that we can still be
better. That we can still reach higher. That there’s always another way
forward.
They believed in more.
More art and imagination.
More truth and transparency.
More connection and compassion.
More courage, more curiosity, more
joy.
More beauty, more humanity, more
light.
They believed in something greater
than themselves, and they never gave up on it.
Robert Redford with his quiet
integrity and that stillness that spoke louder than any performance. His
bravery was quiet, the kind that doesn’t need applause to know its worth. His
kind of beauty wasn’t just in his face; it was in his steadiness, his restraint,
his refusal to sell out what mattered.
Diane Keaton with her wild
authenticity, her fearless laughter, her refusal to sand down the edges of who
she was. She turned imperfection into an art form. She made us feel like our
oddities weren’t flaws, but the fingerprints of a life fully lived.
Jane Goodall with her boundless
compassion and her faith in our ability to change. I’ll never forget hearing
her say, “You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the
world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what
kind of difference you want to make.” I remember sitting in the crowd during
her Douglass college graduation address, feeling my chest tighten because I
knew she was right. She said it softly, but it landed like truth always does,
heavy, humbling, and impossible to ignore.
They never surrendered to cynicism.
They never stopped believing in what was possible. And that’s what we owe them,
and each other.
We have to pick up their torches and
carry them forward. To embody what they exemplified. To live in a way that
honors what they built. Because what they stood for is the complete opposite of
what we’re being subjected to right now.
Each of their deaths was a gut punch,
but also a reminder, a reminder of the goodness and beauty they poured into
this world, and of what we can’t afford to surrender.
Corruption has become the currency of
power. Cruelty isn’t just tolerated anymore; it’s celebrated, televised,
monetized, weaponized. Lies are mass-produced, traded like stocks, and sold
back to the people they were meant to deceive.
Outrage has become the new religion.
Empathy is dismissed as weakness. Truth bends to the will of the powerful while
decency slips toward extinction. The Trump administration parades deceit as
strength, dresses greed in the language of God, and sells division as
patriotism to a nation too exhausted to notice it’s being robbed blind.
And at the center of it all are men
like Trump and Vance and their merry band of feckless enablers, men who treat
hate as heritage and ignorance as armor. Men who gorge on power for its own
sake, who mistake cruelty for charisma, who see compassion as a threat. They’ve
turned moral decay into political theater and fear into an economy. They build
their kingdoms out of bitterness, dress it up as courage, and call it freedom.
But make no mistake: what they worship
isn’t just power. It’s poison. And the only way to stop it from spreading is to
keep fighting for the kind of world Redford, Keaton, and Goodall believed in, a
world lit by truth, held together by compassion, and sustained by people who
refuse to surrender their humanity.
They were living proof that kindness
isn’t naïve, that humor isn’t frivolous, that hope isn’t delusional. They
showed us that goodness can be bold, that truth can be defiant, that gentleness
can be radical.
It hits this hard because we know
what’s being taken from us, and because we’re not ready to let it go.
We can’t let men like that erase
people like them. We can’t let the noise drown out the melody they left behind.
We can’t abandon the world they believed we could build.
Because that world, their world, is
the one worth fighting for. The one we want to leave for our children and our
children’s children. The one where light outlasts the storm.
Their legacies deserve more than
mourning. They deserve momentum. They deserve our love, our light, our fight.
And yeah, I know. I sound like a sap
these days. Maybe it’s the turn toward winter, the shorter days, the longer
nights. Maybe it’s the pumpkin spice poisoning my brain. But I know myself.
I’ll get back to calling Stephen Miller a cuck and JD Vance a couch fucker soon
enough. For now, I’m just letting myself feel it.
Because I still have rage. I still
have fear. I still have disgust and heartbreak and exhaustion. But I’ll keep
showing up anyway, fists up, feet planted, ready to fight for the world they
believed in.
We all have to. We HAVE to.
We owe it to them and to each other to
keep going. To build what they imagined. To protect what they loved. To live as
they lived, truthfully, fearlessly, fully.
Redford. Keaton. Goodall.
They gave us the map. Now we carry the
fire.
Light doesn’t die. It transfers.
And the next chapter belongs to those
brave enough to be human in the most beautiful way.
And in lieu of a song, today I want to
end with a montage of Diane Keaton’s most iconic moments from her favorite
film: “Something’s Gotta Give.”
