Language and imagined communities

I just read a chapter from the famous book "Imagined Communities" by Benedict Anderson and I was enlightened!

Just to share one passage:
What the eye is to the lover - that particular, ordinary eye he or she is born with - language - whatever language history has made his or her mother-tongue - is to the patriot. Through that language, encountered at mother's knee and parted with only at the grave, pasts are restored, fellowships are imagined, and futures dreamed. (p. 154)

I've always wondered why I felt such fascination with Great Britain when I was a child and also a connection to other nations in the Commonwealth. It must have been the English language that I have grown accustomed to. Whenever I read accounts from our historic past under colonial rule... I sense instantly my imagined community. The peasant migrants from around the world coming to this tiny island and making a living under British rule. I felt an instant connection to this group of faceless people, sometimes more so than my people post 1965, though nobody ever told me they were my community or that we shared something in common. It must have been through the language, which stored and captured shared memories and commonalities that transcended time and space.

This connection, this attachment, this binding affection that I have towards this "imagined community" causes me to do crazy things like try to conserve a heritage house in Singapore. (Who knows? Maybe even sacrifice my life in a war?) It's not my house. But that house built in Singapore's history, I felt belonged to us those long gone and those to come. It is ours.

Patriotism is powerful.

Reference
Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities. London: Verso.