Why is it that certain lives seem more important than others?

Today, I received a message that has stayed with me. I asked whether I could share it here. Not because I believe I have an answer, but because I have the feeling this question deserves a conversation rather than a conclusion.

This is what she wrote:

«Hi again Liesbet, I must say I am a big fan of your blogs and your podcasts the more time I spend following them. I love the way I am pushed to think about my own life and my own experiences and the way it makes me relate to you and the way you think.

I was just watching House of the Dragon and a question came to my mind like it does many times. This time, instead of treating it like a random fleeting thought, I decided to ask for the first time in my life. So I am asking you.

Why is it that certain lives seem more important than the others? I just saw a scene where a man wanted to ride a dragon despite not being born in royal blood, risking his life to serve his queen. He got burnt by the same dragon. His life just ended in some moments... yet the series continued. It seemed like only the deaths of leaders or kings and queens mattered, not a man who had as much right to live as anybody else.

Why is it that certain people just suffer and die and it wouldn't affect people for more than a minute while for others people cry and get sad? Why is it that when a singer or a famous person dies, so many people are affected, while when a homeless person dies, it's just not the same? Are lives really so different?»

When I first read her message, my immediate reaction was not to start searching for an answer. It was almost the opposite.

Who am I to answer a question like this?

Some questions are simply too big. They have occupied philosophers, scientists, artists and spiritual traditions for centuries. I don't believe I can answer them in a blog. In fact, I don't think they are questions that ask to be solved. They ask to be explored.

And yet, I couldn't let it go.

I kept returning to her words. Not because I was getting closer to an answer, but because I noticed they were gently exposing assumptions I hadn't realised I was making myself.

The first one is already hidden inside the question.

Why are some lives more important than others?

Before asking why, I found myself wondering whether I first needed to ask something else.

Are they?

The question seems to assume that some lives are indeed worth more than others.

We observe that some deaths receive enormous attention while others pass almost unnoticed, and we are tempted to conclude that the difference in attention reflects a difference in value.

But does it?

Or are we perhaps confusing visibility with value?

Take the example from House of the Dragon. An anonymous man dies, and the story continues. A king dies, and everything appears to stop. But perhaps that tells us more about storytelling than about human worth. Stories need protagonists. Cameras follow certain people. Narratives focus our attention. But does the camera decide who matters?

The same question came to me when she compared the death of a famous singer with that of a homeless person. Society undoubtedly reacts differently. Millions mourn one; the other may leave this world almost unnoticed.

But is that because one life carried more value?

Or because one life was known by millions of people while the other remained largely unseen?

I honestly don't know. But I find it difficult to accept that attention and value are the same thing.

As I continued reflecting, another distinction emerged.

Perhaps we also confuse value with impact.

How many people have quietly shaped my life without ever knowing?

A teacher whose encouragement changed the direction of my studies. An author whose words arrived exactly when I needed them. A piece of music that carried me through grief. A conversation that helped me make sense of something I had been struggling with for years.

Those people may never know the impact they had on me.

And equally, I have no idea what impact my own life has on others. Maybe something I say today will be forgotten tomorrow. Or maybe one sentence will stay with someone for years. Perhaps a small gesture, offered almost absentmindedly, becomes meaningful in someone else's story.

The truth is that I cannot measure that.

None of us can.

That also makes me think about lives that are painfully short. Babies who live only hours or days. People who die young. My heart simply refuses to believe that the value of a life can be measured in years lived, achievements accomplished or recognition received.

That is precisely our limitation as human beings. We long to measure what may not be measurable.

One experience often comes back to me when I think about questions like these.

During a Deep Time Walk, there is a moment where we arrive at LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestor: the distant ancestor from which all life on Earth eventually emerged.

I often smile when I think about that moment. Not because I imagine LUCA somehow knew what would follow, but because it reminds me how impossible it is to judge significance from within the present moment.

There was no audience. No applause. No recognition. And yet, billions of years later, we understand that an entire living world unfolded from that tiny beginning.

Perhaps our own lives are not so different.

We are simply too close to the story to understand the significance of any single life while it is unfolding.

There is one final reflection I cannot ignore.

Maybe the question that touched me so deeply is not ultimately about kings, dragons, celebrities or homeless people.

Maybe it is a question almost all of us carry, whether we articulate it or not.

Does my life matter?

Will anyone remember me?

Do I have to achieve something extraordinary to have been worth being here?

I don't know whether those are the questions she was really asking.

But I know they are questions I recognise in myself from time to time.

And perhaps that is why I didn't want to answer her.

I wanted to think with her.

So I'll leave you, not with an answer, but with another invitation.

If we began with the assumption that every life possesses an intrinsic value that cannot be increased by fame or diminished by obscurity, how would that change the way we look at one another?

I'd genuinely love to hear your reflections.