Winning Essay – “United in Diversity, United with Europe”

Alma Jeftic, a psychology student from Zenica, won the Essay Competition organised in the framework of the “United in Diversity, United with Europe” competitions to celebrate Europe Day. Her essay is entitled “This is How You Reach a Star”. 

 

 

“Sic itur ad astra” – “This is How You Reach the Stars“

 

Words are simply not enough to describe the freshness and lavishness of a true work of art. Somewhere in between verses, notes and paints, some old memories hide, wrapped in colourful dreams of rememberance.  No matter how hard and where we try to escape, their stride is always quicker and stronger.  It is not hard to conclude that those memories murmuring in the mist are that tiny stone on which we stumble each time we decide to move on.  Great artists are revered not only for making their memories alive, but also for finding the path that leads to integration of the past and the future.  The syntagm “universal truth of life”, well known both to the critics and students of literature, speaks about a single point where three different times merge, three great turning points:  past, present, and future.  It is in this interface among them, on a path full of thorns, where the rhymes and strokes meet to paint the portrait of life together.

They say that imagination becomes reality the moment we begin to live it, instead of dreaming it.  Life today is lost in the fog of daily life, and dreams have become the paint brush we use to draw never finished caricatures of the past.  Locked between what had been and what is now, people are unable to find the key to their lives.  It is very hard to pinpoint the moment when enthusiasm and desire had gone, and the dim bitterness of the unfinished stroke was born.  Perhaps the years of horror took them away, the years that had left a clear mark on the portrait of life.  This mark is something each person in Bosnia and Herzegovina carries within, and only a few manage to find the right moves and continue living their own work of art.  Because life is art, and that depends on the eye of beholder.  Spending days and years in one’s tiny hidden world, far away from everybody, being afraid of everybody, will never bring new colour to the canvas.  Only loneliness will remain, which will eternally continue to build its walls studded with shame and fear.  Shame of oneself and one’s memories, and fear of the unknown, are permanent companions of today’s people.  Their closed fortresses, defying the times that come, are slowly turning into withered storages of memories.  Their imagination is not allowed to take hold, for it just might make a new strike on the already worn out fabric of life.  There are times when it is not good to seek the causes of daily problems and appearances.  Often,  knowing the apparent causes is not enough to successfully deal with a situation because the causes we can see are far from those which are real, which remain beyond the reach of a simple human eye.  Everything one may observe is wrapped in vales of memories, old experiences and what happened before. Everybody formulates their realities on the basis of how they see things, playing with truths and forming them as though they were clay in a child’s hands.  In the end, because of many such figurines, people design battles they will remember for decades and because of which they will never leave their strong fortresses.  And they will never come to realise that there is a world and a life beyond the walls, longing to be discovered and understood.  At least as yet another stroke on the canvas left exposed to time and destiny.  Sometimes, it is hard to tell where the ongoing battle with oneself and one’s drives begins and where it ends.  There are people who win such battles, people who come to understand that life is outside, not within their walls.  Those are the people this country needs because they carry with them the long-lost key to integration, while the noun “difference” is foreign to them.  When you are lucky to spend every single holiday in the company of people you love, you are related to, or are best friends with, and by doing that make the most festive of moments even more beautiful for them, then there are no differences and boundaries for you.  Growing up in a family where there are no ‘the other ones’, or ‘us and them’ obliterates all prejudice and opens the door to the whole wide world.  This is where the moment is born when imagination becomes reality, and past and future overcome their boundaries.  Life in a world like that can be considered a true work of art that uses its rhythm, rhymes and colour to bring about peace and liberty.  Getting to know others and unlock the walls of their fortresses is the path that leads to discovering oneself, one’s own values and inclinations.  The great Van Gogh once said “there is no blue without yellow or without orange”. Those words are probably the fruit of the moment when this famous artist made his best strokes.  Probably, at the time, he was not even aware that every oil painting is a life that needs to be discovered and understood.  His paintings would not be what they are now, they would not be in the best museums of the world, if the colours on them were not united; similarly, the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina will never expand their boundaries and horizons until they reach this unity in the portrait of life.  This does not mean ‘to accept the other for our own sake’, as it is frequently explained and interpreted, but to get to know others to understand that we are a part of them, the same as they are a part of us.  It is completely unnecessary and wrong to think in terms of ‘us and them’, because it only widens the gap and leads to more prejudice.  This country has never needed words like that, because the variety of its landscapes makes the most beautiful painting.  There are no words that could bring alive its beauty, as has already been said, words are insufficient when it comes to works of art of great value.  It is not necessary to explain how difficult it is to help people leave their “fortresses” and turn to one another.  Often, it is hard enough to understand how they ever manage to do this.  But, surely, each person in Bosnia and Herzegovina has their personal, tiny, hidden key that opens the door of life.  Life has not gone from this land, it is only locked somewhere in between past and present, on the thin line that many are afraid to cross because they are not sure where it leads to.  Courage has as many definitions as there are people, but most would agree with this one: it is the ability to admit one’s own faults and willingness to improve them.  Each man is the mirror where we can see ourselves and see how similar we are in our diversity.  And how much we need others to be able to find the ways to improve ourselves.  Perhaps it may sound oversimplified, but this is our life task , which we approach at the moment when we take the first breath with the first cry, and with the first strength we gain.  People are much stronger than they think; they are stronger even than the ice walls behind which they are hiding from the present and from the future.  Success can not be achieved by hiding away from reality and what is around us.  That is not the way to finish our portrait.  Those who think that art is just an escape are wrong.  Art is the way to expose all those things that could not be shown otherwise.  Only in the harmony of diverse colours, notes or words can something like that be done.

Beauty is hidden in a moment; you just need to know how to look at it the right way.  And listen.  Open all senses to what is around us, people around us… There is nothing that could stop us from living our own art.  Because that is the only way to find the long-lost key to our own fortress, to get to know others, and through them, ourselves.  This is the path Bosnia and Herzegovina has to take.  This is how you reach the stars.

Europa.ba