When What We Destroy Comes Back for Us

A woman walks among tree trunks stranded on a shore following deadly flash floods and landslides, in Padang, West Sumatra province, Indonesia, November 30, 2025. (Source: REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan)

I’ve been moving through the days with this strange heaviness in my chest, it sits quietly and refuses to be reasoned with. The news from Sumatra keeps replaying itself in my mind — the kind of devastation that doesn’t just happen, but settles into the bones of a place. Entire communities washed away, lives interrupted in ways that feel almost unreal.

And somewhere in the middle of all of this, I found myself caught in the same tide. Nothing like the tragedies outside the city — but enough to remind me how small I really am. The flood in Medan reached my house, knee-high water carrying away things I once thought mattered: furniture that has been passed down from generation to generation in my family, a car engine that won’t start anymore, objects that held memories only I cared about.

For a moment, I felt the sting of loss and anger. But then the feeling evaporated almost as quickly as it came, replaced by a sense of shame I didn’t expect.

How do you grieve broken things when others are grieving people?

How do you speak of inconvenience when some homes were never found again?

I keep thinking about trees. How even in death, they continue giving — becoming soil, shelter, a place for something else to grow. Meanwhile, the universe is out there hoarding gold and diamonds in quantities we can’t imagine, as if trying to show us how absurd our obsessions are. We chase what the cosmos has plenty of, and destroy the one thing it doesn’t: forests that keep us alive.

Sometimes I wonder if we’ve forgotten the simplest truth: if you call something yours, you’re supposed to care for it. Not claim it. Not drain it. Protect it.

But we treat the earth like an inheritance we didn’t ask for and don’t know how to hold. And when the land finally gives way — when rivers overflow and hills collapse — we act surprised. As if nature hadn’t been whispering warnings for years.

I’m okay. My house can be cleaned. My things can be replaced. I can still eat tomorrow, still work, still laugh while watching silly dog videos on social media. But there are families out there who can’t go back to any of that. People who lost more than I can imagine, whose stories will never find a headline.

And maybe that’s why this feels so heavy. Not because of what I lost, but because of what others will never get back.