Reposted with permission from Fields of Concrete, the personal website a local Kitchener-Waterloo sister from the ummah, Timaj Garad. Timaj is a poet, spoken word performer and activist. Her site is brand new, so be sure to check it out!

The revolutionary spirit is comprised of a selfless relentlessness to create positive change. Many of us never develop this. Where we lack is not in the rigor with which we chase this pursuit, but in our perception of the starting point of this journey. The problem is that we want revolutions we fail to start within ourselves. It’s not a lack of wanting something enough, but of being and living what it is we want. When we want more than we are willing to work for, dreams become nothing but notions living vicariously in the mind.

I have learned through observation, experience, and conversation that many people want to contribute something positive to the world, many have a yearning for revolution; but many of those who have the capability never realize this potential. The reason for this outcome is one of the great obstacles of the human experience: “realism”. We fear what is uncertain, those intangible and tangible things that live outside our proximity. Realism acts as a blanket of comfort convincing us only that which has already occured is possible, ultimately destroying the imagination.

When we lose our capacity to imagine, our lives become redundant as we are found lost in the imaginings of others, trying hard to convince ourselves that the dreams we’ve stolen have always belonged to us. We want so much to believe that our borrowed ideas are original beacuse without them we are left with a graveyard of dreams, unvisited. We assasinate our own dreams, our own selves, and bury the evidence by cloaking ourselves in the ambitions of others to create the illusion that we are living the lives we’ve imagine–that we are free. Read the rest of this entry →