Morning. The 16th of July. The families of Sgt. First Class Ehud Goldwasser and Staff Sgt. Eldad Regev are waiting, frozen with terror, for their sons’ return from a two-year imprisonment. The two soldiers were captured by the Lebanese Shia militia, Hezbollah, in a cross-border raid on July 12th, 2006, an assault that provoked the month-long Israeli-Lebanese war. Now, the Israeli government has finally yielded to the augmenting pressure: it would trade five Lebanese prisoners along with the bodies of many more for its two missing soldiers. Finally the two-year-long nightmare for the beleaguered families can end. Finally they can resume a worry-free life. At least that’s how they thought back when Israel announced the exchange. Now, alas, they are torn between so many different possible scenarios. They’re minds are racing.

For the last two years, Hezbollah had adamantly avoided shedding light on the state of the prisoners, no one really knows if they are alive or not. A couple of days before, Hizbullah officials had apparently changed their minds and decided to let Israel know that one of the kidnapped soldiers is dead. The border had been reinforced, the entry point well prepared. Nearly all televisions are broadcasting the moment, while Israel’s citizens sit down to watch the exchange, falling prey to that increasingly spreading sinister silence. All cameras focus on Wafiq Safa, a Hezbollah representative. “The fate of the soldiers will now be revealed”, he declares, as he opens a jeep’s back doors.

I end the use of present-tense, further words cannot fully grasp the ending. One can only imagine the shock and horror felt by thousands as two coffins were unveiled.

Emotions aside, it is easily noticeable the script of the story shares a remarkable resemblance to others from the same region. The Middle-East is full of oxymorons. Bittersweet, both permissive and hard-lined, both peaceful and bellicose, of a cruel tenderness. Be that as it may, but it is also brilliantly characterized by a thick omnipresent layer of fog. A murk that is clearly not healthy. A murk that is almost sure to bring about tragedies like the above mentioned.

Accountable for this mess is no other than the world’s twisted political stage. Take Pakistan, for example. The army-backed dictator Pervez Musharaf has been Pakistan’s president for little less than a decade. Facing imminent impeachment, on August the 18th he resigned (continuously declaring that everything he stood for was democracy). In translation, he was thrashed by the first fairly-elected government in Pakistan. Thumbs up for that. Too bad the good news ends there. Musharaf’s sacking occurs in a time of great instability in Pakistan. The north is begging for peaceful leadership, inflation is a mile high and politicians lack a great deal of confidence.

Miles away, Israel’s prime-minister, Ehud Olmert, fought with a corruption scandal for months, just to be defeated in the end: he promised to leave post after his party decides on a new leader. Mr Olmert’s party is likely to have lost credibility, leaving the opposition Likud party and its hawkish leader, Binyamin Netanyahu, a lot of space for maneuvers. It is worth underlying that Mr Netanyahu is prone to make even fewer peace efforts.

A little to the north, Syria hosted Lebanon’s president, Michel Suleiman and brags about a new diplomatic relationship with Lebanon, a normal, friendly one. In the same time, Syria continues to charge a couple of its own citizens on the grounds of ‘publicly calling for normal relations with Lebanon’. Figure that out.

These are truly perilous waters, sailed by the shrewd and cunning. What’s saddening is that the importance of keeping the lights on is dismissed and so wreckages befall, affecting the masses, the bystanders. Nevertheless, the silver lining is present, although currently vague and hardly noticeable. No one really knows what it looks like, but, who knows, it may look a bit like this:

If LMT doesn’t ring any bells for you, here’s the short story. At its core, LMT (Leaders for the Third Millennium) is an educational programme focused on leadership and soft-skills, programme in which I work myself, as a trainer. Just a few years ago, as the programme engulfed high-school after high-school all over the country, gathering thousands and thousands to its courses, an initially small group of student trainers and alumni formed Club LMT, an NGO firstly destined to put the theory learned in the programme into practice. That initial raw and nebulous goal for the new-born NGO now concretized in its vision - we encourage youth to participate (pro)-actively in building their own future - and its mission - our mission is to transform Romania’s youth through their involvement in educational, cultural and civic projects, to build together the country in which we can evolve harmoniously professionally and personally.

From the collective work of the Club’s members, Branding Romania was born - a national seminar/boot-camp (13th-19th of August) designed to amass and inspire 65 of Romania’s most valuable youngsters. The participants were scattered to the workshops ( Communication & Advertising, Tourism & Environment, Traditional vs. Urban Culture, Entrepreneurship, Education ) where they were introduced to key-concepts of the respective domains of interest and project management. The end result was a combination of self-improvement and well thought out projects that could be implemented back in their communities.

So far so good. But why does this seemingly serious and business-like post has for a title ‘an enlarging microcosm’? Why do I relentlessly associate LMT with the concept of ‘microcosm’? By definition, a microcosm is a world in miniature, in which the elements share one specific characteristic, like the elements in a mathematical set. To those who have felt it, the question will seem rather silly and out-of-place. Try and follow me and you’ll see why.

[...], but in later years he recalled that there had been one moment which had given him intimations of another mode of being. His father had taken him to watch the ceremonial ploughing of the fields before the planting of the next year’s crop. All the men of the villages and townships took part in this annual event, so Suddhodana had left his small son in the care of his nurses under the shade of a rose-apple tree while he went to work. But the nurses decided to go and watch the ploughing, and, finding himself alone, Gotama sat up. In one version of this story, we are told that when he looked at the field that was being ploughed, he noticed that the young grass had been torn up and that insects and the eggs they had laid in these new shoots had been destroyed . The little boy gazed at the carnage and felt a strange sorrow, as though it were his own relatives that had been killed. But it was a beautiful day, and a feeling of pure joy rose up unbidden in his heart.

You’re probably wondering, what on earth do LMT and Gotama’s episode have in common? Well…Extasis. That’s right. Extasis. But don’t be tempted to interpert the word through the prevalent pejorative filter that associates extasis with drug usage. Extasis literally means ‘to stand outside the self’. And that’s the widespread phenomenon that’s gripped LMT. If it should be explained furthermore, I’d say it’s a stance in which one experiences unpremeditated joy, while fully empathizing with those around him. I daresay this stance, fundamentally based on spontaneous compassion and selfless empathy, triggers a rapture so strong that it brings for those who feel it a moment of spiritual release.

Given the fact that I had been through somewhat similar stories, I figured beforehand that it would mean just work to me. But, ‘expect the unexpected’ eh? As the event unfolded, whatever role I played - organizer, trainer, participant, etc - it was innevitable not to feel the vast surge of energy that now has all of us pointing confidently at whichever goal, dream or vision we hold dear. One big collective thank you. :)

Note: What do you think, fellas? Feel free to add some more thoughts, voi, cei mai iubiti dintre pamanteni.