A life can dissolve into a headline with unsettling speed. A child’s final moments become a story on an Instagram feed, sitting between a fashion reel and someone’s weekend brunch. The trembling voice of a grieving mother appears as a muted video, often skipped before the first second completes. Many look away instinctively, closing the app or switching screens as if distance from the image could distance them from the sorrow. Some even announce a social media detox, hoping that stepping back will soften the unease. Yet the tragedy remains untouched by our avoidance. What is dismissed with a swipe continues as someone else’s unrelenting reality.
This tension-between what we see and what we are unwilling to feel-defines the modern spectator. Consuming grief is effortless; carrying it is not. So the question emerges: what does it mean to witness suffering that we cannot alter? Is calling out, sharing a post, or expressing outrage all we are capable of offering? Or is there something deeper in the quiet, uncomfortable recognition of a loss that does not belong to us but still shakes us?
To be a silent witness is not the same as being indifferent. Is it? Is sitting with discomfort okay? Enough? How do we move forward, then? Perhaps not with the illusion that life returns to normal, but with an understanding of why it moves at all.
The responsibility lies in carrying the memory with a bit more care, allowing it to shape how we see our streets, our systems, and one another.
In the shadow of that manhole, the city confronts a question larger than the tragedy itself: What does it mean to keep living in a world where grief can be scrolled past, yet must never be ignored?
