How Julius Caesar Changed My Life

991 Words2 Pages

It is difficult to write about an incomplete life. It would be absurd for me to say that I have led a good life when the developments of the future are yet-unknown, just as I could never bemoan my life for a spate of misfortunes. Nevertheless, there are many experiences I am glad to have had, and some I wish I had been spared. Yet every experience taught me something: experience truly has been the “teacher of all things,” as Julius Caesar once said. The most painful experience of my life, and that which most shaped my path, was the end of my relationship with my father when I was about nine years old. During the final years that I knew him, he grew increasingly unstable and violent; I decided not to speak to him when I saw him abuse my mother. My parents’ …show more content…

Despite being under the legally-mandated age to serve in public office, I declared that I was running for mayor of my hometown. Running for mayor as a teenager was an enlightening experience. For years I had absorbed the macro view of politics, studying figures such as Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Campaigning door to door, talking to people I would not speak to otherwise, and recruiting volunteers, I learned the truth of Tip O’Neill’s maxim that “all politics is local.” During the campaign, I encountered angry denunciations from the mayor of my town, criticism of my proposals from opposed residents, and skepticism from state assemblymen and other local politicians. But—perhaps because of the lessons in resilience I had absorbed years before—I took it all in stride. Through I received coverage in the New York Times and other outlets, I was not elected to a position I would not have been legally allowed to serve in. But my campaign inspired others and raised the level of discourse in my hometown. It taught me about practical politics, about the importance of relating to others, and about the value of

Open Document