#10: On Loss, Attachment, and the Places We Carry
Riding off the whispers of Sappho, Mosab Abu Toha and Mai Ghoussoub
"Someone will remember us, I say, even in another time."
—Sappho
Loss is a curious thing, isn’t it? It touches us in ways that often feel impossible to articulate. Sometimes, it's sharp and immediate, like the loss of someone close—a person whose absence creates a space so vast that you feel the weight of it pressing in on every quiet moment. Other times, it’s distant and abstract, the loss of people you never knew but can’t quite stop thinking about. Then, there’s the most complicated kind: losing someone you cared about, but in ways that never felt complete. It’s the kind of loss that lingers, unresolved and messy, leaving more questions than answers.
I have been reflecting on loss these past two weeks and in doing so, I have found myself thinking about attachment—specifically, my attachment to places. Somehow, and this has always been the case, I feel equally at home in New York City as I do in Kigali, Singapore, Bangkok, Hanoi, Geneva, Manila and Muscat - just some of the cities that I’ve occupied over the years. It’s as though I carry all these places within me at the same time. Each city has shaped me in its own way, and I take bits of each with me wherever I go. When I think about leaving a place, it's not just the streets, the scents, or the people I miss—it’s the person I was while I was there. Leaving is its own kind of loss, but it’s also a reminder that all these places live inside me, layering my identity, existing together and influencing who I am. This kind of attachment reminds me that even though I’ve stored memories of myself in different cities, I’ve also gained something from each one, creating a version of home that’s both everywhere and nowhere all at once. The perk of this transience is that I can always return.
Everywhere we look today, we are surrounded by reminders of loss. I’m not trying to be emo here, it’s just how the media functions. From wars to natural disasters that wipe entire communities off the map, the world seems to be in a state of evolutionary mourning. The news is full of stories of displaced families, of lives cut short, of entire generations impacted by crises that seem endless. It’s easy to feel disconnected from these global events, but every face on the screen, every name mentioned briefly before the broadcast moves on, represents a life lived, a story unfinished. And in a way, their loss becomes part of my lived experience at this precise moment of the collective human story. The sheer scale of it all can feel overwhelming, but it has compelled me to confront the fragility and interconnectedness of my own purpose. I may sound doomsday about this but my thesis is that loss is a natural constant that you almost require in order to also appreciate the “gain”.
Much of my childhood was spent in the Middle East. So naturally, the nature of recent events in Lebanon and Gaza have kept me awake at night, compounded by a relentless bout of jet lag. Regional peace was an expression rarely spoken or read during my formative years. Yet, despite living in my own insulated bubble, I vividly recall the stories shared by friends and classmates—narratives of families who endured the worst of humanity and emerged to tell their tales of resilience. I will never claim to be an expert on the exhaustive, collective pain of entire geographies, even if those geographies were one day my home. But I can listen, be an empathetic sponge, and hold space for this type of loss.
In Gaza, where blockades, airstrikes, and decades of conflict have left homes in ruins and families fragmented, loss isn’t a momentary event—it is a constant state. I never thought that in 2024, I would read about a cholera and polio outbreak as a reality for young children, women giving birth in hospitals without access to pain medication, or hospitals becoming pits of terror. In one of my favourite poems by Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha, he writes, "I have lived between fire and water," capturing the relentless weight of existing in a place where conflict and survival coexist. His words resonate with the experience of those who have lost not just loved ones but the fabric of daily life itself. If there is one thing you take away from this piece, please read “Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear”. It will show you how conflict-caused anguish can also breed profound and relentless hope.
In Lebanon, according to my friends who grew up there, I suppose loss often feels like a persistent haunting. One of my favourite Lebanese writers and artists, Mai Ghoussoub, once asked, "Can one ever get over the loss of a country?" Her question lingers in my mind. For so many, the loss of place and identity is intertwined, an absence felt in every moment of trying to rebuild something that no longer exists in the same way. What I love about Mai is that she reflected on loss and all the stuff in between in a way that few thinkers have. After reading her manifesto, Leaving Beirut: Women and the Wars Within, all I could ruminate on was that departure and loss are opportunities to reflect on our capacity to forgive and our willingness to accept responsibility. In no way do I mean to diminish the loss felt by an entire nation and it people. Rather, it is a way for us to begin to assess (not always fully heal) the wounds that departure may have caused.
As an international affairs practitioner, I wish I could say that the blood-stained challenges in these places amongst others are merely geopolitical issues because that would make them so much more square to solve. The reality is that they are deeply rounded personal experiences of grief and survival. For me, they’re also a stark reminder that the loss I see from afar has real, human consequences. I wish I had more words to comfort those who suffer from the pain of these events. I’m not too proud to admit that I don’t but I hope to recognise the depth of the devastation at the bare minimum.
It’s strange how loss can create a starting point for thinking and for questioning. It’s the place where things get real. I think about the faces I’ll never meet—the ones I only know from news stories or fleeting headlines. In some ways, that distance makes their loss feel less tangible, but it doesn’t make it any less real. It’s like trying to grasp the scale of something immense but finding your hands are too small to hold it. Yet, in that enormity, I’m reminded of our shared fragility. Their loss is also ours, even if we don’t fully know it.
Then there’s the loss of people I do know, and that’s where the weight really settles in. It’s in the everyday things, the small details that linger long after they’re gone. I found out recently that two of my friends passed away - one was a former colleague and another a classmate in high school. Both young and full of light, both gone too soon. I don’t think grief is ever just about missing someone; it’s about the small echoes they leave behind. A song that pulls you into the past, the way they used to laugh at a joke only the two of you understood, the moments you can’t help but replay because, in some ways, they still live in them. The loss of someone you know changes you, not just because they’re no longer there, but because their absence forces you to confront the part of yourself that existed only in relation to them. And when they’re gone, so is that version of you trapped in that memory with them alongside you. I’ve been meditating on the loss of these two wonderful humans over the last two weeks and with the deep sadness, I’ve also found immense gratitude that I had those giggle-filled conversations with them.
The hardest loss I think about, though, is the one that hasn’t happened yet. I found out this week that my mum’s brother, my uncle, was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer. Details aside, it’s complicated. I was never close to him growing up, for more reasons than I’d like to divulge here (for now). But it’s a loss I can see coming—a person in my life with whom the relationship is not only complex but tangled with familial misunderstandings and words left unsaid. The anticipation of his absence weighs heavy, because I know that when he goes, it won’t just be him that we lose. There’s a lot of questions I have for my uncle, questions that I naively hope will resolve the delta between person I have seen from the person he perhaps truly is. It will be the possibility of resolution, the chance to scribe what’s unsaid between him and our family. In some ways, that looming loss feels harder to bear than the finality of someone already gone. It’s the slow, creeping knowledge that time is running out, and that the emotional knots that my mum’s family have yet to untangle, will stay with me long after he is no longer here. This kind of loss is layered with regret before it even happens, an ache for something I know I can’t mend in time. It’s something that traces back way before my lifespan and likely something we’ll come to terms with only in generations to come.
Sappho understood the aching permanence of loss. Her words evoke the idea that, though we lose people, places, and moments, they are remembered—by us, by others, even by time itself. It’s a humbling thought, that no matter how much distance grows between us and what we’ve lost, there is always something left behind. The memory of them lingers, reshaping our lives in ways both subtle and profound. In the context of loss, Sappho’s words are a reminder that, even in absence, something remains. Someone, somewhere, will carry forward the echoes of those who are no longer here.
I think there’s a lot to be gained from that reflection. It’s not about finding a silver lining or pretending everything happens for a reason. It’s about learning to sit with the unknown, to let loss be a space where we think about the things we usually avoid. Maybe that’s the most difficult part—allowing ourselves to feel the weight of what we don’t understand. But in that space, we can begin to ask new questions. What do we carry forward? How do we live with the losses that can’t be fixed?
In a world that often feels so chaotic, where loss seems to touch everyone in some way, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by it all. But I’ve started to see loss as a point of clarity, too. It strips away the illusions we build around ourselves, the comfort we seek in the familiar. It forces us to see things as they are, raw and unfiltered. It’s not about celebrating loss or pretending it’s some kind of gift. It’s about acknowledging that, in its wake, we are different. And in that difference, we can choose how we move forward.
In reflecting on attachment and loss, I’m reminded that the world doesn’t just take away—it gives too. New beginnings, unexpected introductions, and the serendipity of positive people and experiences entering your life balance the sense of grief. It’s strange how, in the midst of loss, there’s often an arrival of something fresh. The randomness of meeting someone who shifts your perspective, or the start of something that brings joy when you least expect it, shows that life is never purely about loss. The process of letting go is often accompanied by new people or opportunities entering, gently nudging us to move forward even when we feel stuck in grief.
I think that’s where loss leaves us—not with a sense of finality, but with an opportunity to think about what remains. What we do with that space, how we fill it, is up to us. We don’t get to decide what we lose, but we do get to decide what we gain from reflecting on it. It’s a starting point. A place where we can begin to see the world, and ourselves, a little more clearly.