Love, Loss & Loneliness
The Eternal Trinity
Welcome, or welcome back, to Untold Postcards. On today’s episode, we explore the holy trinity of existence: love, loss, and loneliness.
I am sitting in my backyard with an iced coffee, the ice slowly melting into the dark liquid, softening its edges the way time does to memories. The sun hangs low, painting the sky in hues of amber and rose, though the heat of summer still lingers, clinging to the air like an old song. The cicadas hum their ancient refrain, their voices rising and falling like waves on an unseen shore. For a brief moment, time stills, suspended between the past and whatever comes next.
Perhaps you are somewhere far from here, or maybe just on the other side of a window, watching the light shift across your walls. Grab a cup yourself, settle in, and let’s begin.
Love: The Eternal Flame and the Inevitable Fall
Love is the fire stolen from the gods, a gift both luminous and ruinous, casting shadows even as it warms. It is the flickering flame of devotion and the wildfire of longing, spreading uncontrollably through the soul. Like Prometheus’s defiant offering, love is bestowed with both promise and punishment, its brilliance inseparable from the risk of suffering. Prometheus, in his defiance, gifted it to mankind, but like all divine offerings, it came with a cost. Love lifts, but it also burns. It is the madness of Phaedra, the devotion of Orpheus, the yearning of Izanagi searching for Izanami beyond the veil of death. It is the quiet sorrow of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, separated by the heavens, destined to meet only once a year. It is the bittersweet ache of longing—too distant to hold, too close to forget.
Love, in all its forms, is a paradox. In Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love, it is a whisper in a hallway, a glance held for a second too long. In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, it is a memory erased and rewritten, proving that even when love is taken from us, its imprint remains, like a name carved into stone. Love is both ephemera and eternity, an illusion we willingly believe in, knowing it cannot last, yet clinging to the hope that maybe, this time, it will.
The Chinese speak of the Red String of Fate, an invisible thread that binds two souls across time, space, and circumstance. It is love that transcends lifetimes, resisting the pull of oblivion. In Your Name, love bends the laws of physics, weaving across dimensions, proving that connection is never truly severed. The Greeks tell of Eros and Psyche, a love tested by separation, doubt, and darkness—an initiation into suffering, for love without trial is not love at all. The Japanese know of koi fish who swim against the current, enduring the impossible, until they transform into dragons—love, too, demands struggle, a belief that the climb is worth the fall.
Love is sacrifice. It is Paris choosing Helen and dooming a city, setting fire to an empire for a single embrace. It is a love so consuming that it rewrites destinies, collapsing kingdoms beneath its weight. Troy burned for ten years, not for land or power, but for the longing that defied reason. Such is love—capable of beauty and ruin in equal measure, the spark that ignites both devotion and destruction. It is Hachikō, waiting at the train station for a master who will never return. It is Gatsby, staring across the bay at a green light, believing that the past can be rewritten. Love is often a prayer unanswered, a thread cut too soon, a story unfinished.
But for every love story, there is an ending. And endings are not always soft. Some arrive with a whisper, others with a storm. Some leave nothing but a quiet, persistent ache, the kind that settles in the bones and lingers long after the fire has gone out.
Loss: The Weight of Absence and the Ghosts We Carry
If love is the thread, loss is the unraveling. It arrives like a tide that does not retreat, eroding the edges of what we once were. Loss is Hades taking Persephone, a bargain struck when no one was looking. It is the ghost of Eurydice, slipping from Orpheus’s grasp because he could not bear the uncertainty of the unseen. It is the lovers of The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, separated by duty and the pull of fate, looking upon the same moon but never sharing the same sky.
Loss is not merely an event; it is an echo, reverberating through time and space, growing softer but never truly fading. It is Achilles mourning Patroclus, the weight of absence turning even triumph into sorrow. It is the old poet writing verses to a lover long gone, their name the only constant in the shifting landscape of memory. It lingers in the spaces between conversations, in the scent left behind on fabric, in the way someone’s name feels in your mouth long after they are gone. It lingers in the spaces between conversations, in the scent left behind on fabric, in the way someone’s name feels in your mouth long after they are gone. It is the unplayed piano in an abandoned house, the unopened letter on a forgotten desk, the ghost of a touch that never fades. In Manchester by the Sea, grief is not something to be healed but carried, an anchor rather than a wound. In Interstellar, love stretches across galaxies, yet it cannot undo time’s quiet theft, proving that even the deepest bonds are at the mercy of impermanence. The Romans believed that the dead remained in the world of the living as long as their names were spoken; perhaps this is why we whisper to the ones we’ve lost, hoping that memory alone can hold them in place.
In Chinese folklore, the Hungry Ghosts wander, unsatisfied, yearning for what was, trapped by desires they cannot release. In the Japanese tale of Oiwa, loss curdles into vengeance, proving that not all grief is passive—some ache turns sharp, some mourning turns to fury. In the legend of the White Snake, love and loss intertwine, one unable to exist without the other, an eternal cycle of devotion and sacrifice. Some hauntings are of our own making, and some absences grow so large they become a presence of their own.
But even in loss, life does not pause. The seasons turn, the tide that took away also returns, and with them, we are left to contend with what remains. Perhaps that is the only promise time makes—to take, and to leave behind just enough to go on.
Loneliness: The Silence Between Echoes
Loneliness is not the absence of people but the absence of understanding. It is Narcissus, so enamored with his own reflection that he perishes alone, lost in an illusion of companionship. It is the Moon Rabbit, ceaselessly pounding the elixir of immortality on the cold surface of the moon, looking down upon the world but forever separate from it. Loneliness is the sound of an unanswered call, the weight of a chair left empty at a table set for two, the way silence in a familiar place suddenly feels foreign.
In Lost in Translation, it is two strangers drifting through neon-lit loneliness, speaking in half-finished sentences, their connection as fleeting as the city lights around them. In Her, it is Theodore whispering into a void, in love with a voice that has no hands to hold, proof that solitude is not merely physical but the hunger to be seen, to be understood. Loneliness is the empty theater seat beside you, the fading echoes of a conversation that once filled a room, the realization that even in a crowded space, you can be profoundly alone.
The Greeks punished their defiant with isolation—Prometheus bound, Sisyphus alone with his stone, Tantalus reaching endlessly for what he could never touch. The Japanese speak of hikikomori, those who retreat into shadowed rooms, not out of weakness, but because sometimes the world outside is too sharp, too indifferent. The Chinese tell of the Weaver Girl and the Cowherd, two lovers torn apart by celestial forces, allowed only a single meeting each year—a reminder that even the gods are not immune to longing.
Loneliness is the poet writing to a lover who will never read their words. It is the lighthouse keeper watching ships pass but never docking, the way an old song can make an empty room feel full. But loneliness, like all things, is a season. Even the moon waxes and wanes. Even the koi fish, if they swim long enough, find their way to the top of the waterfall, transforming into dragons. Perhaps, in time, we too will find our way back to something greater than solitude.
The Cycle That Binds Us
Love, loss, and loneliness do not exist in isolation. They are the three fates spinning the thread of existence, entwined so tightly that one inevitably leads to the next. Love, when embraced, carries within it the quiet promise of loss. Loss, in its wake, leaves behind the long echo of loneliness. And loneliness, in its ache, rekindles the yearning for love. It is the ouroboros—the serpent consuming its own tail, endlessly creating and destroying itself, a cycle as ancient as the first beating heart.
The Greeks understood this cycle as fate, an unchangeable course written before birth. The Romans saw it as destiny, a path laid out by the gods, indifferent to mortal will. The Chinese and Japanese believed it was inscribed in the stars, woven into the red string that binds us across lifetimes, in the rivers that carve their way back to the sea no matter how far they stray.
But there is a lesson in the repetition. Each turn of the cycle reshapes us, carves us into something new. We are not the same people each time we love, each time we grieve, each time we sit with our solitude. Like Sisyphus pushing his stone, we may feel as though we are reliving the same burdens, but the climb itself changes us. Each ascent strengthens our resolve, shaping us into something more resilient, more aware of the impermanence of both suffering and joy. With every push, we gain new perspectives, finding meaning not in the destination, but in the act of enduring, in the quiet realization that growth is found in the struggle itself. Like Orpheus, we sing, knowing our song may not bring back what we lost but still choosing to let the melody linger in the air. Like Icarus, we rise, not because we are blind to the fall but because the flight itself is worth it.
And so, we continue. Because in the end, what other choice is there but to live?
Until next, love, Mukta<3