Aileen Mero

Lehigh University Catalog Record: https://asa.lib.lehigh.edu/asa/Record/313009

Liberty is the ability to secure a future. 

For the longest time, abstract concepts like freedom or liberty have eluded me. I’ve never been able to pin it down. It seems almost paradoxical, to me, to have a definition at all. But a symbol used to embody the concept, something used to epitomize an idea far bigger than itself—that can encompass liberty; And in this respect, the Aeneid by Virgil is symbolic of liberty to me. 

Its titular character, Aeneas, embodies this paradox. He is a refugee, fleeing from a home burning behind him, tasked with reviving a people who have lost everything. His freedom does not necessarily come from choosing to do this but in the outcome. In the Underworld, Aeneas comes face to face with his great losses, but he also comes face to face with his future—descendants destined to carry the legacy of his people, emblematic of immigrant children who do the same for their parents in a new place where possibility is something feasible.

--Aileen Mero ‘28

Lehigh University Catalog Record: https://asa.lib.lehigh.edu/asa/Record/257913
A version of this text has been digitized and is available through the Internet Archive.