nursingforsocialjustice

Doing a PhD is super hard. It is not a beautiful collective experience of scholarly achievement and learning research. It’s a strange road of competition and self-doubt, peppered with hoops to jump through to validate how smart you are. It’s so hard to motivate myself to charge forward with this. I have to remind myself, I’m doing this because I have the capacity and the privilege to do it, and because nursing means something to me. Not everyone does a PhD, and they certainly aren’t taking this route for some sort of external monetary reward.

Education should not be a privilege. We know this. This isn’t a novel idea. Higher education similarly, should also not be a privilege. So, why, in Canada, in 2020, is it? That’s the thought question of today.

The world doesn’t start and end with me. My 10 year old daughter is aware of this. She knows that nothing means anything if the end game isn’t to make the world a better place for everyone. Sometimes I still have to remind myself of that.

The idea that I am most important…it’s a curious one. Because…am I most important? Do I have to justify this? Or is it simply fact because I am me? And, if this is so, why are we so mad at people like Donald Trump or people who live life like their self-interest is the only interest that matters? Is this a sliding scale based on self-righteousness or an arbitrary marker of do-gooding? I’m not sure. What do you think?

Is more compassion, more support, more love, more connection, more kindness a thing? What a strange world we live in if one person’s happiness is dependent on another person’s suffering? If my understanding of having more is contingent on someone else having less? And that “more” is a tangible, material good? Or an arbitrary of “enough” money? Some sort of product? That’s not how that should work.

All of us need more philosophy in our lives.

Love,

Michelle D.