It's the relationship I have with the world: always trying to

The poet of exile and memory, Amin Maalouf, once confessed: “It’s the relationship I have with the world: always trying to escape from reality. I’m a daydreamer; I don’t feel in harmony with my epoch or the societies I live in.” In this lament he reveals the ancient sorrow of the outsider, the one whose soul does not fit the mold of his time. His words echo the cries of prophets, artists, and wanderers who have always felt estranged from the world around them, longing for a truer home beyond the veil of appearances.

To be a daydreamer is both a gift and a burden. It grants the spirit wings to soar above the confines of the present, to imagine other realms where justice, beauty, and truth prevail. Yet it also alienates, for the dreamer is never fully at ease among the common pursuits of society. What others embrace as reality, he finds shallow or cruel, and thus he flees into visions of what could be, rather than bowing to what is.

Maalouf speaks too of his relationship with the world, strained and restless. For the epoch, with its wars, its divisions, its obsessions with power and wealth, cannot contain the spirit that yearns for harmony. The dreamer feels himself adrift, belonging not to the hour in which he was born, but perhaps to some future yet to come—or to an age long past where he imagines humanity walked closer to truth.

Yet in this alienation lies also heroism. For those who do not feel at home in their societies are often the ones who transform them. The daydreamer plants seeds of vision that later generations will harvest. Though mocked or misunderstood in his own time, his longing for harmony is not wasted; it is the quiet fire that keeps hope alive in a world too easily content with imperfection.

So let this lesson endure: if you feel out of step with your epoch, do not despair. For perhaps you are called to see what others cannot, to dream what others fear, to challenge the world not by conforming to it, but by revealing a vision beyond it. The relationship with reality may be uneasy, but from such unease springs the music of prophets, the wisdom of poets, and the courage of all who dare to dream against the tide.