Make sweet lemonade out of sour lemons

By the psychological counsellor Shireen Al-Bayari

It is told that a farmer in Florida bought a piece of land and put all his money and hope into it. When it became his and he went to see it, he was struck by the harshest blow fate can deal, which left him shaken and on the verge of collapse: he saw a desolate, abandoned stretch, unfit for farming and useless for grazing, with nothing in it but burrows in which hundreds of snakes lived, with no way of fighting them off or getting rid of them. He almost lost his mind, until a remarkable idea occurred to him: to breed these snakes and make use of them. He did so, and succeeded beyond compare. He would extract the venom of these snakes and send it to pharmaceutical laboratories, which drew from it the antidote that cures those very poisons, and he sold their skins to shoe traders at the highest prices, while tourists came to him from everywhere to see the first farm in the world set up for breeding snakes. What do you think now of that man's creative abilities, who turned a land of venomous snakes into a living natural museum for tourists who wish to look, a place for producing fine leather, and even a pharmaceutical factory for making serums protecting against the venom of those predators? This is true transcendence, indeed the very essence of it. Flexibility in dealing with changing circumstances is one of the features of the prophetic example in innovation and intellectual creativity: the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, raised his companions to act well according to the different situations and the many changes, for the innovative and renewing mind is marked by flexibility in handling the events it meets and does not stand rigid at one particular opinion, as we have said. This is what the Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, faced when news reached him that a huge Quraysh caravan was coming down from the outskirts of Syria, returning to Mecca and carrying wealth and abundant money for its people, intending something else by it. When Abu Sufyan sensed the danger to his caravan he was able to save it from that imminent threat, after sending to Mecca to rouse them to protect their money and stir their zeal to come out in a mobilisation that would repel any attack. Here the situation turned from the caravan to the call to arms. Truly a person may be struck by passing events while he is going on his way, and in facing them he needs to gather his resolve and his strength, to call upon his experience, and to stand before them keenly attentive and intensely focused. These sudden tests judge people more precisely, and tell more about their values, than the tests whose date they know and which they approach confident and prepared. And so the Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, was able to deal with this situation, which changed from one extreme to its opposite, with a remarkable creative vision: gathering information about the size and equipment of the army, securing his internal front, putting matters to consultation, seeking the help of God Almighty, and taking in new and creative ideas for handling the situation.