The Dream of Scipio

I am writing from the hole of Europe. Sounds funny but yes it's not a typo, not the whole, the hole. On the Euro coin Switzerland is a hole because it is not part of the EU. In the hole of Europe I stumbled upon a sentence in a book recently: "All because Manlius was able to take the imaginative leap to see that Roman civilization was more than Roman rule." When I think of how many times I have heard that the EU is bad because it is an imposition of rule(s) on our countries... take the imaginative leap! (It doesn't hurt!) The EU is so much more than a bag of rules... it's most of all a Union, that is, countries who have the same ideals and interests.

My imaginative leap goes like this:
When I enter Italy I now somehow feel more on home ground than I do here. The EU is not just about buraucracy and rule(s). It is also about feeling part of something bigger. Feeling that we're different but yet we have something in common. It is that same feeling I had in Muenster every time I spent time with the international students. Yes, we speak different languages (and not just three or four like here) and our cultures vary a lot but we are all EU citizens. We are neighbors, brothers and sisters, more so than before because of the EU. And we can be proud of being part of something so (culturally and otherwise) diverse and rich as the EU. And because of this my imaginative leap is also the happy ending of a Europe that was forever fighting. This union will bring us many, many years of peace because like all good things it is borne out of idealism. And with a bit of idealism, courage and imagination, we can carry it forward and make it into something great...