I remember that when I was 15, I was given a photo album, but since I didn't have any photos of my own at the time, for some strange reason, I used the album to fill it with pictures of actors and singers that I cut out of magazines. Years later, while going through some old belongings, I found the album filled with faded images that meant nothing to me, so I took each of those images out of the magazines and began filling it again with photographs that were meaningful to me.

Just as I did in the past with that album, we often fill our homes, our closets, and even our lives with unimportant things, just so we don't see empty spaces. We believe that everything must be occupied, filled, used, just to obey the customs and norms of a society that fills or occupies everything.

I believe that emptiness not only confronts us with the actual size of space, but also forces us to rethink what we fill it with. Imagine a notebook crammed with letters, scribbles, and random pieces of information with no connection to each other, where you can't make sense of anything, so you don't care if you cross things out, tear pages out, or even repeat data and information because you don't know what you have written or haven't written. On the other hand, when you have an unused notebook, you try to make sure that the first thing you write is orderly, beautiful, and clean. Seen in this light, emptiness or absence is pregnant with a new beginning, new possibilities, and a particular appreciation for what will occupy a space in your world.

Many times I have faced that nothingness, that absence of things and people that I once had and no longer have, or in the worst cases, that were never mine. Faced with these absences, I often felt sad, fought against them, and even lived in denial. But over time, I have learned to live with what I have, to value it, and to be grateful for it. I think that when you have many things, it is difficult to know the value of each one in your life, because ironically, we appreciate things in their absence, not in their presence.

In psychology, there is something called habituation, which is the human ability to get used to everyday things: we get used to watching sunsets, seeing the sun, seeing our loved ones. Each of these things passes before our eyes without us giving them the importance they deserve. But what happens if, for some reason, something that was once an everyday sight is no longer in our lives?

So yes: there is beauty in absence, but also much to learn. Not only does it teach us to appreciate every thing, person, or experience; it also invites us to rearrange our spaces, internal and external, to keep only what is important. Let's fill our personal album only with cherished images, not just fill it for the sake of filling it with things we don't appreciate or things of no value. And when I talk about albums and photographs, I'm talking about life and the things and people we have in it.