Imagination and Islamic Work
Imagination is an important component to success, especially in Islamic work. It can improve the way we conduct ourselves and help us to be more sympathetic towards others and more forgiving. This is because it allows you to put yourself in another person’s place and see things from their perspective. It lets you appreciate why they made the mistake they did or how they must have felt. It allows you to make an excuse for their behaviour. All of this requires you to use your imagination.
When the imagination conflicts with your will, it is usually the imagination that prevails. Can you use your imagination to support your will and help you prepare for your exam or your work, or job interview? You can if you imagine your success. Your chance of success increases immensely when you can imagine it.
Your imagination provides you with a number of intellectual, linguistic, and life skills which improve the quality and originality of your thinking and the effectiveness of your interactions with others.
This is why children play games like “take a trip with your imagination” or “draw a picture from your imagination”. Children’s picture books strengthen their imaginative skills.
Computer games, when used judiciously, can develop imaginative thinking. Some games allow children to design and build beautiful homes, libraries, gardens, and even cities in original and unexpected ways.
College students can read books that open their eyes to the treasures of other minds and stimulate their own imaginations. Great literature, especially poetry that is rich with imagery, can lift the veil from neglected parts of our minds. How many poetry collections do you have on your bookshelves? How many have you read? How many poems have you committed to memory or recited out loud?
When it comes to being successful in difficult endeavours, reality is not enough. Imagination is not enough. When imagination departs from reason altogether, it can lead to daydreams that have no bearing on our real lives whatsoever. There needs to be balance. The imagination must be actively employed without disregard for the real world.
If the imagination is a right-brained activity, then comprehension and realisation are left-brained activities. Neglecting either of the two is harmful and can deprive you of the priceless intellectual treasures your mind possesses.
The athlete who possesses a broad imagination breaks the Olympic world record, while the athlete who entertains misgivings of failure will usually meet with the expected failure. When you go for a job interview or sit for an exam, if you imagine yourself as a failure, it will have a negative effect on your performance and make you fail no matter how well prepared you are. In this case, you have turned your imagination against you.
Your expectations matter. Allah says: “I am as my servant thinks of me.” [Sahīh al-Bukhārī and Sahīh Muslim]
When you dream of success, but you spend your time between computer games, chatting with your friends, and going on excursions, you will go bankrupt, even though your imagination is behaving naturally. The Egyptians have a saying: “The hungry person dreams of the food market.”
When a woman’s husband is late coming home, how does she imagine things to be? Does she think he has met with an accident, or does she suspect he is involved in an illicit affair? The way she receives him when he gets home depends on how she imagined the situation.
When you imagine yourself spending a nice time with your children, it is as if you had done so for a moment. When you imagine that you have become incapacitated by an injury and think how your children will still be needing you after you had been the major part of the lives, it can bring you to tears.
When you imagine the past and think of the moment when the angels prostrated before your father Adam, it makes you feel how dignified you are as a human being and it fills your heart with the love of your Creator who fashioned you in the best of forms and gave you qualities possessed by no other creature. Thinking like this will prevent you bowing your head before anyone else and you will treat others with dignity and respect.
Sheikh Salman al-Oadah
Source: en.islamtoday.net (May 17, 2015)