"They escaped persecution in the form of violent antisemitism and came to Canada with next to nothing. They built their lives from the ground up and understood, through lived experience, what the normalization of cruelty did to the human spirit, how quickly people can be swayed by the opinions of the day, and how easily one could forfeit the human capacity to stop and truly think about what one is doing."
"I do not come from a traditional background, nor have I ever been what we might consider by conventional standards a model student. In school, I often got into trouble for what I later understood as challenging gender biases, asking "why" just a little too much, and, at one point, earning academic probation for my so-called "oppositional spirit." After high school, I worked various jobs across multiple sectors, and it took me a full seven years to gather the courage to return to the classroom."
The narrator did not come from a traditional background and was not a model student by conventional standards. School behavior reflected challenges to gender biases, frequent questioning, and an academic probation for an oppositional spirit. After high school, the narrator worked many jobs across sectors and waited seven years before returning to the classroom. A former boss dismissed philosophy as useless, a remark that felt oxymoronic. Both parents fought for freedom: a stateless father and a mother who ran away at thirteen. They fled violent antisemitism to Canada with almost nothing, rebuilt lives, and practiced philosophy as curiosity, engagement, and moral vigilance. When the narrator decided to return to school, fear was present.
Read at Apaonline
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