Nation as a Toy

I'm working on a book about my students at the Old Town School, and last week I asked them to write essays on how Estonia has changed in their lifetimes. The essays were all quite interesting, but I found one particularly creative:

"There are so many of us- the Children of the Singing Revolution. 1989, 1990- the Soviet Union begins to collapse; people of supressed countries fighting back an aggressor. These fighters made babies- lots and lots of babies, with hopes of saving the nation- exclaiming 'THERE ARE STILL ESTONIANS, AND,' with a threatening groan, 'THERE WILL BE MORE.'

"Here we are now. The lot of us. We don't remember the moment before Estonia regained independence. We vaguely remember how life was before. We know life if better now- we hear it every day. We are the children Estonia was given to- the Nation is our toy. We still don't play with it, though, for we are still too small. We play with our lives. Some know the rules and obey them, some bend them, some break them; and most of us break ourselves.

"We haven't been very good children: the more you expect, the less you receive. We don't appreciate what has been given to us, because it's the only reality we know."