(The place of which our multicultural children should be proud of)

One of the people I love most, once told me: „I hope you marry a Swedish-Spanish man who lives in Turkey and has Greek parents…It would be such an interesting relationship!“. Of course I cannot deny it could be amazing. Well, when I had to think about European Union, I thought that the example fitted perfectly.

I often heard people being sceptical about moving away from their birth place and seeing what it is like to live somewhere else. They are obviously moved by fear and fear is often masked by a false sense of patriotism. „What is better about living abroad?“ Also in Italy nowadays we can see how people tend to “mind their own business” and isolate themselves from others, as if they are better off all alone. If they could only know how much beauty there is in discovering and trying out new lifestyles so as to find what suits you best, and also find out how constructive it is to see how other people think, maybe their opinion would be different. The fascinating thing about Europe, is exactly this desire to unite people. And uniting them in diversity. We should be overjoyed and thrilled about being part of the EU. We should be able to say „Who am I? I‘m European“. It is so strange to see how foreigners consider us as something so drawn together and we ourselves are not conscious of this. In mythology Europe was the daughter of Agenore, the king of Tyre, and for her beauty and qualities, Zeus fell in love with her and desired to bring her with him to Crete. So he transformed himself into a beautiful white bull and, once he had obtained the princess’ trust, he brought her there. From Europa’s name perhaps is derived the name of the continent to the west of Asia. We should love Europe just as Zeus did. But why?

Jean Monnet in 1952 said: „We are not bringing together states, we are bringing together people“. Our young sister Europe, who always dresses in blue and wears a twelve gold star necklace, offers us the opportunity to travel, study, work, live everywhere in Europe, it doesn‘t matter if you‘re Bulgarian, Italian, Dutch or Polish. Our children in the future could be French and live in Italy, work in Portugal and have parents in Poland, but love the Austrian way of life. The children would always whistle cheerfully the „Ode to joy“ as their favourite song  and celebrate every 9th of May, because it’s the birthday of their land.

What I say does not mean forgetting our own nations and our roots, it means a widening of our opportunities . Elisa, a great Italian singer, sings for her country like this: “This is the beautiful land where I was born, the nature, the colours that I love, the place in this world that I belong […] the lining of my soul, the place where I will always return.”

Moreover, there is no State today that can be great without the help of others. Dwell upon… Europe: the smallest continent but one of richest in terms of culture and variety. History reminds us that it is not the first time Europe has tried to bring all the individual states together in peace and harmony. There was someone who already, in those days, knew that there is no “power” in being all alone. Our continent always had some kind of unity…but we have to underline that this is the only time that unity has been reached without battles. The Ancient EU ( The roman empire, for example) shared, at the same level of our “New Europe”, everything: currency, food, ideas and ideals. But what can we say about Ancient Europe? Our sister, she had a very combative character. She was with no doubt very warlike. Greek thinkers considered people who lived in the continent opposed to Asia (“Europeans”) to be brave but also belligerent. Europe for ages experienced on its own territory the cruelty of wars, blood and pain. For this reason it is impossible to think about the possibility of a new war between two states of the union, now. Of course, what could still make us sceptical about the union is that, in Economy, there is no such an equality yet. But, in my opinion, this is an annoying scar that only time, and (why not?) a real sense of unity could heal. So, If we are still wondering about the question above, if we are still thinking about why we should really love our new, free, united Europe, or if we do not think of ourselves as European yet because we cannot find the one right reason (among thousand reasons listed) to become very proud of our Sister E., think about this: New Europe, New Union, finally, no war.