It is not hidden from those who are book bearers (readers), especially lovers of free poetry, to link the title of this article with the name of a prose book by the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. And this is true, it is the name of his book without alteration, hence my quotation marks.

We are all indeed in the presence of some kind of absence.

Yes, all of us. And if we do not feel it ourselves, especially then. 

Sometimes what we lack in our present life is companionship and company, and sometimes the gathering of family and siblings around us, and often the absence of ourselves from ourselves may be the biggest factor disturbing our sleep. Today we are not as we were yesterday, until our features have become completely different, for us, not necessarily for others. And if others also notice our difference and change.

 And no harm, as it is said, "Change is the only constant in life," because the natural human changes and will change throughout the years of his life if God grants him a long life in which he can discover, experience, be tested, and develop, to change.

This is because positive change may come after a trial, an unpleasant incident, in which you learn lessons you would not have known without it. 

Like the great Corona incident, for example, which came as a shock to all humanity, specifically to the privileged peoples who have their basic needs and more, and from it we extracted lessons reminding us of that harsh period which we pray to God not to repeat nor for anything worse to come. Among these lessons is our faith that the blessings taken for granted in our imagination are trusts that can vanish in the blink of an eye, and that what we see as obviousities may one day become a distant wish, and that provision, whatever its form (health and wellness, safety and stability, family and children, study and work, etc.) is a matter in the hands of God, Glorified and Exalted, requiring from us sincere praise, thanks, and gratitude to the honorable face. 

This change may come after a pleasant event, like success and happiness, even if those joys are trials by themselves. For example, engagement to a life partner in the stage of courtship, then marriage and childbirth in pursuit of establishing a family, all of which bring happiness to the soul of a person because of their novelty and their ability to make a leap in the quality of life, and at the same time require many pauses of self-reflection to be sure that you are dealing with awareness, understanding, and sincere effort with your new and renewed family, to reach yourself and them to a good place full of affection, mercy, peace, and stability. 

And throughout your life journey with all these situations, conditions, and developments, it may happen that one morning you wake up and look at your reflection in the mirror and do not see yourself. You feel that you are present and absent at the same time. As if the one looking at you is a stranger to you. And you marvel at the speed of life passing: When did the past ten years pass? Weren't you just yesterday there, striving for a goal you achieved and finished at its time? 

Weren't we in 2020 yesterday, and 2010 the day before yesterday? When did we become in 2022? 

And this is possible, "For you are now not you."

So live your reality today in the best manner and condition, and have mercy on the memories of the past for the sake of yourself and others, and do what you can do for your tomorrow in this world and the hereafter. 

Be present, be present.