The fifth person Eddie meets is a young girl—Tala. During the war, Eddie set fire to a building and later believed he had seen a child inside. He has carried the guilt for decades. Tala shows him that she was in the building—and that Eddie's purpose was not to save her then but to keep children safe at Ruby Pier. The little girl he died saving is one of them. His life had a purpose: to protect the small and the innocent.
Tala says: "You kept the children safe. You made sure the rides were safe. That was your purpose." Eddie never saw it that way. He thought he had wasted his life at the pier. But every day he was keeping children safe. The child he died saving is alive because he was there. Purpose is not always dramatic—it is often quiet, daily, and invisible until someone names it.
We may spend our lives not knowing our purpose. Eddie's was to keep children safe—at the pier, and in the moment of his death. No life is a waste when we see how we were part of the whole.