I can’t remember who said it, but my good friend and colleague Máirtín Ó Muilleoir, publisher of this newspaper, told me about it.
Someone – a wise and wonderful charachter, no doubt, with an uncanny insight into the ways of the world – said it to him: every day he wakes up in a United Ireland.
You can take from that what you like. A cynic – and there are plenty of them, full blown practising cynics, even at this time of the year – might say, well you can imagine anything.
John Lennon imagined a spiritual, humanist Utopia on Earth, and proclaimed war to be over, Happy Christmas. So you can imagine you are in a United Ireland, and continue on your happy way. A bit like Tír na nÓg or Cripple Creek.
However, I think there might be more to it than that.
It seems to me that the two parts of Ireland have never been closer, not since partition and probably before that. The Irish and British governments work hand in glove together, not just as the two sovereign parliaments on this island, but also in the European context and, indeed, the world context.
Britain and Ireland are both regions of Europe, neighbouring regions of Europe, with a political and social reality that increasingly casts them together, politically, militarily, economically and culturally.
We are subject to the same Human Rights legislation, for example, and more and more to the same harmonisation policy across a wide range of issues that once were held as example of how our two nations were different.
Even the term nation cannot now be applied in the same old loose and largely incorrect way we used to bandy it about. The idea of the British nation is all but gone, with the re-emerging nationalism of Wales, Scotland and England forcing a serious re-think about how these matters are viewed.
And does anyone seriously think that the British government will remain out of the Euro for very much longer?
We will soon have the same money all over Ireland as all over the Eurozone, we will have more cross-border bodies administrating our two states under the Good Friday Agreement - whatever version of it is agreed upon - and we will come to share the enlightened European attitude towards minority languages, cultures and peoples.
The recognition of the value and importance of diversity on the one hand, and the emergence of Europe of the Regions on the other, means that times have changed.
The idea of an Ireland that is essentially different from other nations of the world yet free to take its place as an equal to all others has won the day.
Of course there are many things still to be changed in the North, many improvements and adjustments need to be made.
The yoke of oppression, however, has been busted – torn asunder by the political and social upheaval of the last century – and now the rest is up to us. The people.
We are now faced with the uncomfortable reality that the kind of Ireland that we wish to live in and have our children live in – the nation that we would like to see as the basis for future generations - is there to be created, developed, moulded, nurtured and celebrated. We just have to go and do it.
The census figures to be released to the world on Saturday week are expected to show a significant increase in the number of Catholics and nationalists in the Six Counties, perhaps as much as forty-six or forty-seven% of the total population. This means that the day is drawing near when a majority within the North will vote for a United Ireland.
The Good Friday Agreement is perfectly clear on this issue: the Secretary of State may call a referendum on the Border question if he is of the opinion that a change might come about as the result of such a referendum.
The forthcoming census figures might well convince him that the time has come, with a Border referendum being incorporated into the Assembly elections on the First of May next year.
I hope Paul Murphy does go for a referendum next May. I can just feel the enthusiasm with which young nationalists would set about registering their opinion on that day. Imagine being able to complete the work of Tone, Emmet, Pearce, Sands and Farrell simply by voting once.
Which nationalist would not embrace that opportunity with wholehearted zeal, young or old? We would just have to go out and vote and the job would be done, the business finished.
Whether this comes about or not is a bit of a red herring anyway because both governments can read the figures, can see the pattern, can look at the roll books in the schools and see that there is a significant Catholic majority bubbling under. The change to a United Ireland is on its way, it is inevitable and it is unstoppable.
Our own mentality, our own mindset is not so easy to change, however. For example, why do we persist in using the term Northern Ireland. Belfast is in County Antrim, and County Antrim is in Ireland.
Now readers in unionist areas may decide that County Antrim is in Northern Ireland and that is bully for them, but for me County Antrim is in Ireland, Ulster has nine counties, and the border does not exist.
We have two systems of government on this island, but that may be no bad thing.
Two systems of government, incorporating diversity and harmony, is fine. It is unnecessary as far as I am concerned and eventually will be replaced by a single unitary government, but fine in the meantime.
The Ireland I am interested in has a population that is as fluent in the Irish language as it is in the English tongue, it is a nation of equality, of social justice, a place where the people who create the wealth get a fair share of it and where culture, arts education and sport are cherished by all and funded by the government...
I have a long list of elements to my particular vision of Ireland and most of them have to be worked for, striven towards and achieved. The border does not figure, however, because the border does not exist. Every morning I wake up in a United Ireland: you can too.
