Maulana Wahiduddin Khan | The Sunday Guardian | Aug 29, 2021
Any ant, coming upon a heap of sugar and a heap of salt, would take the sugar and ignore the salt. This is the culture of the ant and can be summed up thus: ‘Ignore what is undesirable and adopt what is desirable.’
Who taught this culture to the ants? Undoubtedly, it is the Creator who instilled this instinct in the ants. It means that ‘ant culture’ is not merely the culture of ants; it is a divine culture. It is a part of creation. It is according to the law of nature and also a lesson that the Creator wanted to impart to man. In unspoken words, the Creator says: ‘O man! Adopt the ant culture.’
The ant follows this principle by instinct. For ants, it is a natural compulsion. The ant does not know any other way. But man has freedom and he does by his own choice what animals do as a matter of instinct. Man should, of his own, follow the ant culture. What for the ant is a question of instinct, for man is a question of exercising his freedom of choice. He must exercise his intellect, realize the importance of the ant culture and adopt this culture as his own.
According to the law of nature, our world is a mixture of both negative and positive features. This culture is not accidental; it is a direct product of the divine plan. God Almighty wants to give man the credit which He never destined for the ant.
It is the right exercise of freedom that makes one a deserving candidate for paradise. Paradise is for those selected persons who rightfully exercise their freedom of choice and are able to maintain their positive thinking although surrounded by a jungle of negativity.
It would be a very easy matter for a person to adopt the ant culture. According to the law of nature, our world will always be a mixture of the negative and the positive, but by the same law of nature, negative features will always be less than one per cent and positive features will always be more than ninety-nine per cent. Discover this fact of nature and you will gain a two-fold benefit: this discovery will give you mental equilibrium and at the same time enable you to opt for the positive features and ignore those features that strike you as being negative.