transforming through love and imagination
10 min read
Collective transformation cannot occur without the individual; individual transformation can go hand-in-hand with the collective. I underwent a massive transition in my life within the past few years as I pursued my undergraduate and now get ready for the next stage of my life. As I developed I noticed a strong connection between imagination, grace, and transformation. I saw this tweet a few weeks ago and thought it reflected how a POV shift changed me.
I was driven by spite for a long time, doing things to prove myself or someone else “wrong” for thinking I was unable to accomplish something. It was like a fight against pressure or a battle to overcome defeat— defeat being someone else’s words or my own self-doubt. I realized I acted out of insecurity, anger, and bitterness. Just like the tweet says, I transformed myself through pain and suffering. I am now much more driven by internal love, passion, and care for what I do. It makes the task or project at hand more fulfilling because my driving source comes from within. Obviously I can’t say exactly how this shift arose or what it will lead to, but I do know that I move in the world with more grace and imagination than before. I still feel the pains of life’s difficulty, but experiencing necessary hardship doesn’t equate glorifying it; this reinforces a scarcity mentality.
Trying to live a softer life brought me more towards abundance by learning myself, understanding my feelings, and overall growing into the person I want to be. It required out-of-the box thinking to gain newness. For the sake of the analogy, I want to paint a visual picture. Imagine your entire life exists in one single plane and that plane is a box. You can progress in your life from one point to another. You can move around in circles. You can go back and forth, up and down, side to side. Still, all this movement occurs in the confines of a box. The box symbolizes all the opportunities you’ve ever had, all your experiences, preconceived notions, and anything else that has brought you to where you are in the present moment. Getting out of that box can’t happen with what you already have— that’s precisely what makes the box in the first place.
It reminds me of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. As the story follows, imagine a group of people live in a cave, unable to move and can only stare at the wall in front of them. Behind them is a fire that reflects shadows on the cave wall as things pass by. That is all the information they have to understand the world. These shadows are what's real to them and their assumptions or attempts to make sense of the imagery creates their version of the truth. Now, imagine what would happen if a person was able to escape the cave. Plato’s story explains that they would be at a loss once they realized the life they lived was an illusion. The person would rather believe in the shadow-truths than the new world they see. Still, over time, they would get used to their new truth and accept it for what it is. Plato ends by describing what would happen if the person returned to the cave. After seeing the world anew and attempting to share it with the cave people, they would be rejected and denied. The cave-dwellers, only understanding the world through shadows, would say “your eyes are ruined” rather than undergo the mental discomfort of change.
If the box and cave are one, then aspirational capital is what can pull us out of our existing reality; it can transform us. Aspirational capital is the ability someone has to dream, be curious, and imagine in the first place.
If someone lived their life unaware of options/opportunities around them or lacks access to those things, aspirational capital is suppressed. There is a glass ceiling for what a personal can desire. The same limitations can apply to people caught up in rigid routines. Living in survival mode or living to work takes up energy that can be used to pursue aspirations. Capitalist systems almost necessitate the inability to dream of or pursue more while still upholding an idealistic idea of life. Somehow the American dream paints a picture of endless possibilities for success yet the average person works their entire life to live paycheck to paycheck. The blame is in turn placed on the individual for not doing more, assuming that they had the ability to do so, which further discourages them from changing course. The natural impact would be the minimization of imagination, creativity, curiosity, love, and grace. Still, it is not impossible to bring those things back to the forefront.
Change does not occur in one big swoop nor in linear processes. I think of aspirational capital as a muscle that encompasses creative skills, imagination, curiosity, love and grace. These things need to be consistently trained so they can initially develop and strengthen further. Following our curiosity and imagination can help us seek out more. Whatever form that pursuit takes, anything that exposes you to new ideas or experiences can shift your existing limitations. In my own life, I began using the arts as a way to spark introspection. When I decide to paint something, I ask myself: What do I want to paint? What does this mean to me? How am I feeling right now, and how will that affect my art? This process forces me to reflect and create something uniquely mine. It’s a practical application of creative and imaginative skills. It takes my inner monologue out of my mind and expresses it in a physical, visible way. Others might find different ways to engage their creativity, but the underlying theme is the same: small efforts to pursue creativity, imagination, love, grace, and curiosity are stepping stones toward building more aspirational capital.
Oftentimes new things find me through coworkers, mentors, friends, family, and other loved ones. Community creates a collection of varied perspectives/ideas/knowledge outside of what a person experiences first-hand. What makes this more beautiful is the reciprocal nature of communal learning. Others support me in my growth and in turn I can better support others. Aligning with positive internal forces ignites a warm flame that not only benefits the individual, but the collective. Max Haiven’s book Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power: Capitalism, Creativity and the Commons further brings these things together as he explores the political power that comes with transformation. He references the occupy Wall Street movement as an example since it brought people together to occupy a public common space to demand economic/political/social change. The non-hierarchical leadership system meant that everyone ought to have a voice, which takes innovation and creativity when there is a broad mix of ideas and personalities collaborating. Still, there was a feeling that their revolutionary goals needed more. The protesters were still in their box-cave plane (American systems) and needed something different to think outside of it. Organizers looked at the Arab spring for inspiration, sending people to Egypt to learn more from Arab revolutionaries. It made me think: to go across the world to learn something from people you may see as so different than you, somehow, you still see yourself in them.
There’s a Quran quote (above) I use to mentally connect these curiosity/imagination and love/grace/care to explain how people, no matter how different, are still connected.
The ayah reminds me that everything is in constant prostration toward Allah swt, meaning that there is an innate spiritual connection between me and everything in the universe or in creation. It’s a reminder of humility and the connection between me, you, and everything else in existence. In other words, there is oneness in everything. On a physical level, atomic similarities add another layer. I can see myself in the stars in the sky or the sand on the beach not only because we submit to the same creator but because we are all made out of the same thing. We are only different because of the arrangement of our chemicals. The building blocks of matter— protons, neutrons, and electrons— that take on different shapes all break down to the same things. Recognizing these similarities brings me a sense of humility because I am not above anything else in the grand scheme of things. Everything is connected in one way or another, and seeking abundance can only mean living in a sense of understanding and imagination.
Seeing my connection with other things— living, dead, animate, inanimate— plays a major role in my ongoing transformation on an individual level and as a member of my local/global community. I’ve always been a “heart-on-my-sleeve” type of person. I try to move through the world with good intentions and selflessness, but my convictions taught me how important these traits are. Islam created and strengthened a foundation of love, understanding, etc. that I extend towards others and accept for myself. Community brings this out as I interact with other people and recognize their value as individuals and the value of everything they bring to my life. Seeing the most in everything around me, no matter how big or small, catalyzed my shift from scarcity to abundance. The mindset change creates space where I can live softly, dream of greater things, and develop stronger relationships with others. I became, and am still becoming, more aware about what makes me who I am. Learning myself this way helps me extend understanding towards others, recognizing that we are all people in this world trying to figure ourselves out. At the end of the day, isn’t that what it means to be human anyways?