What’s this unity everyone’s talking about?

Often in discussions with people of the Portuguese community, I hear about how “un-united” the community is. I’m constantly told that we need “unity” and that we need to be “united”. However, no one can explain to me exactly what this “unity” is. What would it mean for the community to be united? To date, I’ve not received a proper, coherent and understandable response. The closest in the creation of the united Portuguese club or association. All existing clubs and organisation would all collapse into one united organisation. Besides the fact that in reality this would never happen, exactly how would the community be united if such a united club were formed? If hypothetically, all organisations, clubs and associations were to be united to form a “mega-club” it would unite all organisations, clubs and associations into one umbrella mega-origination. Full stop. Nothing else. It wouldn’t translate into the mystical unity everyone refers to. Knowing the Portuguese community as I do, such a mega-club would quickly show cracks of disunity and breakaways would quickly follow. It appears not be apparent to many members of our community that the diversity of opinions, ideas and outlook is a good thing. Who says that unity is a good or positive thing in the first place? The presumption is that it is! I dare to disagree and say that “unity”; something that can’t actually be defined in the first place, is illusive and basically a cryptic idea. If unity is defined as that I have to agree with someone else even when I don’t agree with him or her, then I don’t want that unity. If unity means that we should all express our “Portugality” (“Portugalidade”) in only one way, expression or style, then I’m not interested in that “unity” as we are simply too diverse, vibrant, interesting and awesome as a community. Each of us are individuals with singular personal expressions. This perceived unity can, in my opinion, take only one form; where each one of us takes personal responsibility. We need to be the best person and, in our case, also the best South African we can be. Being the best, loyal, honest, hardworking, faithful, compassionate, caring and kindest person we can be is our contribution to the unity that matters most, that of the unity and understanding amongst all men and women; irrespective of how diverse or different we each are.