Answering such a question is of course linked to what one considers “getting in touch with politics”. Is it watching and commenting on the news with one’s parents when 7 or 8 years old ? Becoming a class delegate when aged 12 ? Is it involving oneself in the university’s management during one’s two degrees, discussing with teachers about the courses program, the library’s management and how to fire teachers harassing students ?
One could also say that getting elected to a building’s owners committee only days after buying one’s first apartment in 2009 was the first step in “real world politics” ? Then there are also the many times when a friend, a political scientist rather active in the media, asks for your input on various topics and then proposes in 2011 to co-write articles for the newspaper “Les Echos” on the Greek financial crisis : that’s another way to participate in the political debate.
But if you only consider real politics to be involvement with political parties and politicians then another timeline emerges : the first contact was meeting a minister, my uncle’s boss, at a political rally/barbecue when I was a teenager. Then there was the time, during an electoral campaign, when a sitting member of the belgian federal parliament came to campaign in my building and did actually do the work of following up on the issues I discussed with her, asking the question in parliament and not forgetting to send me the answer she received a few months (and two ministers) later.
More active on my side, there was the time when I took the time to write an in-depth answer to a municipal project, sending over 10 pages of observations which the authorities thought to have been the work of a whole association.
Around 2015 I came to the conclusion that we needed the authorities’ support to solve some of the issues of the building in which I live, which is built in the poorest neighbourhood of my country. I started to go to the meetings of the municipal council, saw who worked and who did nothing. I spoke with the representatives, made my own opinion on the issues being discussed. Both main political groups reached out to me, I decided to go to the assemblies of one of the group which I deemed more competent, to have ideas better aligned with my standards and the capacity to act on its ideas if given access to power.
In 2018 I was asked to be on the candidates’ list for the municipal elections. I agreed. I was not directly elected but a resignation meant that in March 2019 I became a city councilman, trying to do my best for the 27000 inhabitants of my 1km² municipality in the heart of Brussels. I served during the COVID period, and after too : in 2024 I campaigned again, but the election was cancelled due to electoral fraud. In April 2025 I was reelected to my seat, and I keep fighting.
All this felt largely natural, an evolution born of values, of readings, of a strong influence from Stoic philosophers. Yes it causes so much frustration, because one can’t achieve what one sets out to do, because one sees how much destruction, mistakes, graft and corruption are present in the system. The sheer incompetence of so many actors, be they ministers, parlementarians or just local city councilmen. The little ego infightings amongst the parties’ political personnel, taking so much time and energy to the detriment of the debate of ideas and progression of actual necessary reforms.
Yet I keep doing my best to defend my neighbours, and the citizens of my municipality. When the mayor tries to close an organization that provides roofs over the head of more than 200 families I look for solutions to either save the organization or attempt to find solutions to keep those people lodged in decent housing. I want to rage when I hear talks about closing down the municipal polyclinic or the elderly care home because money has been so mis-managed that it has become impossible to pay salaries. But then I go back to Epictetus, to Seneca, to Marcus Aurelius, I take a deep breath, and I go back to the fight knowing that once every disgusted person has left politics only the disgusting remain, as the US or Israeli situations make abundantly clear with the actions of mister T and mister N…
In all this I try not to let emotions speak, I repress my feelings and try to keep rational, logical, focused on the goals. When, during COVID, the mayor did not want to give even just sandwiches to the revenue-less, penny-less women victim of sex-trafficking that live in the streets near my home I was quite angry and disgusted by someone ready to let human being starve rather than help prostitutes, but I knew that while I might not manage to change his mind on that topic I still had to keep working with him on other issues, and try to give others the support they can legitimately expect from those they have elected for a position such as the one I have the privilege to hold.
And when meetings drag along uselessly, I remember that at least the small participation fee I will earn will help some students, given how I’ve always given any money made from my political activities to my former university.
I don’t do “high” politics, I try to be a servant of the people, a servant of the democratic ideal, and to pursue the stoic ideal of “doing good or, at least, cause no harm”. And helps me find my point of Ataraxia.
That’s my story with politics.

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