As life becomes harder and more threatening, it also becomes richer, because the fewer expectations we have, the more good things of life become unexpected gifts that we accept with gratitude.
–Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943
The post below ran here last year at this time. I don’t like replaying a post so soon but felt that the wisdom in the words of Etty Hillesum warranted it, especially in a year like this one that seems to hold a variety of challenges for us all. I’ve added a few short passages from her diaries below that spoke to me. In this week of giving thanks, I am grateful to have come across the words expressing this young woman’s inner world.
I was looking for something to share about gratitude since this is the week of Thanksgiving. I came across the quote above from a name that I didn’t recognize, Etty Hillesum. I loved the sentiment she expressed but wondered who she was.
Turns out she was young Dutch Jewish woman born in 1914 who chronicled her spiritual growth in her diaries and letters until her murder at the hands of the Nazis in the Auschwitz concentration camp in late November of 1943. She was only 29 years old, a mere 81 years ago.
Her writings had been turned over to a friend before her internment so that they might someday be published. Though many attempts were made, it wasn’t until 1979 that they finally found their way into print as the book An Interrupted Life. In 2006, the Etty Hillesum Research Centre was founded in the Dutch city of Ghent to research and promote her writings.
As I pointed out, Etty Hillesum is new to me so I can’t speak with any authority on her writings. However, many of the passages I have read exhibit great depth. Some of my favorites thus far:
Suffering has always been with us, does it really matter in what form it comes? All that matters is how we bear it and how we fit it into our lives.
But I do believe it is possible to create, even without ever writing a word or painting a picture, by simply moulding one’s inner life. And that too is a deed.
Never give up, never escape, take everything in, and perhaps suffer, that’s not too awful either, but never, never give up.
Many of her observations, especially about how suffering plays a large role in one’s meaning of life, echo those of Viktor Frankl, a psychoanalyst and survivor of Auschwitz who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning. And that second one here, about the creation of an inner life adding to the meaning of one’s life, is something I believe all too many of us overlook in our own lives.
Inner creation is as important as any outward creation. Maybe more so. This inner creation is the core of the self and serves as an anchor which you can hold to when the outer world is spinning out of control.
Anyway, let’s kick off this week of being grateful with a nod of gratitude to Etty Hillesum for sharing the wisdom she uncovered in her brief stay here. Her life’s search for meaning adds to our own.
And that is indeed a great gift.
A few more passages from An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943:
Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.
Life may be brimming over with experiences, but somewhere, deep inside, all of us carry a vast and fruitful loneliness wherever we go. And sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths, or the turning inwards in prayer for five short minutes.
Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others.
We human beings cause monstrous conditions, but precisely because we cause them we soon learn to adapt ourselves to them. Only if we become such that we can no longer adapt ourselves, only if, deep inside, we rebel against every kind of evil, will we be able to put a stop to it.
Most people write off their longing for friends and family as so many losses in their lives, when they should count the fact that their heart is able to long so hard and to love so much as among their greatest blessings.
I don’t want to be anything special. I only want to try to be true to that in me which seeks to fulfill its promise.
There are moments when I feel like giving up or giving in, but I soon rally again and do my duty as I see it: to keep the spark of life inside me ablaze.
Redtree Times 
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