When we lose certain people, or when we are dispossessed from a place, or a community, we may simply feel that we are undergoing something temporary, that mourning will be over and some restoration of prior order will be achieved. but, instead, when we undergo what we do undergo, is something about who we are revealed, something that delineates the ties we have to others, that shows us that these ties constitute what we are, ties or bonds that compose us? it is not as if an “i” exists independently over here and then simply loses a “you” over there, especially if the attachment to “you” is part of what composes who “i” am. if i lose you, under these conditions, then i not only mourn the loss, but i become inscrutable to myself. who “am” i, without you? when we lose some of these ties by which we are constituted, we do not know who we are or what to do. on one level, i think i have lost “you” only to discover that “i” have gone missing as well. at another level, perhaps what i have lost “in” you, that for which i have no ready vocabulary, is a relationality that is neither merely myself nor you, but the tie by which those terms are differentiated and related.
