Last Wednesday night, the entire nation, literally the whole of Sakartvelo, was out on the country’s streets to celebrate its victory between Georgia and Portugal at the 2024 Euros, the 17th competition of the UEFA football championship. When the referee’s whistle blew with a two-nil result in favor of Georgia, the scoreboard displayed the results that every Georgian had only dreamed of, and a moment that will live on in their minds forevermore. Then, all of a sudden, thousands of hooting cars and tens of thousands of chanting fans, who were no longer in control of their emotions, took to the streets here in Tbilisi and elsewhere to tell the world that Georgia could make it if it tries hard enough.
The exultation was something to behold. I found myself right in the midst of those victorious celebrations in the wee hours of that happy morning. It didn’t cross anyone’s mind even for a second to go home; the nation was up to rejoice, forgetting what seemed to be trivial and mundane. People everywhere were in absolute triumphant exultation, with their wide smiles and cheerful faces popping out of car windows and sunroofs, some of them lodged firmly on the slippery hoods (amazingly, not falling out of the moving vehicles!) and in open trunks with bottles of drink in their hands. Cars with their high-beam lights on were everywhere, but it was the most felicitous traffic jam I have ever seen in my life.
All of a sudden, I remembered my participation in something like this in Phoenix, Arizona, when I worked as a reporter for American television; I was doing a story about a car show in Phoenix. The ongoing physical action and the extensively expressed emotions were exactly the same with only one difference: there, it was just a traditional annual car show, yet here, it was the nation coming together as one, bonded by their pride and joy. The excited public exuded the never-seen-before unity and dedication to the Georgian national team, not divided or affiliated. It was the millions of enthusiastically pronounced words and phrases, firmly and intentionally beaten into one patriotic thought: that we need to come together to achieve the goals we all have on our minds.
Watching all that, I happily imagined what could happen if that positive national energy was used for the cause of Georgia’s economic development, for instance? The answer at the back of my mind was that Sakartvelo would one hundred percent see a result which might have enough potential to propel the country into one that exudes the strength and power of other Western nations. Last night, I saw the energy of our nation come together, which may seem fleeting right now, but has the tremendous potential to be turned into a power that makes this country and nation one of the happiest ones on Earth.
BLOG by Nugzar B. Ruhadze
