Etty Hillesum

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. –Mark Twain

It will always be both blessing and curse, my father said, as, minutes before bed time, I confessed the turmoil that continued to ravage my inner life as surely as acne was ravaging my adolescent face. My father was referring to my sensitivity which–even on my best days–reached hyper-levels the moment I stepped out of bed. If a single paradox could define one’s life, then my father’s insightful words would be my lifesong.

To say that I’ve lived in my head would be an understatement. I’ve lived in my head, dreamt in my head, argued and speculated in my head, grieved and celebrated in my head, died in my head. And, as my father proclaimed, this inner life blessed–and continues to bless–me in many ways. My inner life has made me wildly empathetic, so much so that I’ve often found myself wearing the lives of others–at least to the degree that one who is determinedly empathetic can. Ironically, this has often helped me to get out of my own head, to act compassionately, and to treat others as broken and beautiful beings. Paradoxically, my inner life has also cursed me with self-doubt and indecision. It’s also cursed me with the same acute pain of those with whom I’ve empathized. I’ve walked a mile in their shoes–internally, that is–and I’ve got blisters to prove it.

My journey with my own inner life brought me to another woman whose inner life was also both blessing and curse. Etty Hillesum reveals this paradox in the diaries she left with housemate Maria Tuinzing before she left the Jewish transit camp, Westerbork, for Auschwitz in 1943. In her teens and early 20s, Etty’s inner life was tumultuous, often tortured. She wrote:

I still lack a basic tune; a steady undercurrent; the inner source that feeds me keeps drying up. Worse still, I think much too much. My ideas hang on me like outsize clothes into which I still have to grow.

I think too much? Preach it, Etty. There’s something to be said about a continuous loop of thoughts (the unexamined life not being worth living and all), but the relentless presence of ideas–old and new–can be exhausting. Like Etty, when I desperately desired a basic tune, I often got a cacophony of independent notes and rhythms which was anything but a steady current.

Etty confessed that her inner life was often too complex, too indulgent. At times, it was marked with self-doubt–even self-loathing. She explained that she suffered from a bacchanalia of the spirit and lamented that she was taken in by everything she read. Someone like Dostoyevsky still shatters me, she said. Yet, at other times, her inner life was marked with the exquisite joy of experiencing the world around her. Whenever I saw a beautiful flower, what I longed to do with it was press it to my heart, or eat it all up. To be like a lily of the field, she said, would be the right way–the best way–to live. Etty Hillesum’s inner life was, indeed, a paradox.

Always, however, it was marked by her desire to know and serve God. In her diary, she wrote:

Something I have been wanting to write down for days, perhaps for weeks, but which is sort of shyness—or perhaps false shame?—has prevented me from putting into words. A desire to kneel down sometimes pulses through my body, or rather it is as if my body had been meant and made for the act of kneeling. Sometimes, in moments of deep gratitude, kneeling down becomes an overwhelming urge, head deeply bowed, hands before my face. 

It has become a gesture embedded in my body, needing to be expressed from time to time. And I remember: “The girl who could not kneel,” and the rough coconut matting in the bathroom. When I write these things down, I still feel a little ashamed, as if I were writing about the most intimate of intimate matters. Much more bashful than if I had to write about my love life. But is there indeed anything as intimate as man’s relationship to God? 

She confessed that she had been the girl who could not kneel for much of her life. A host of physical ailments, as well as sexual desires and struggles, tormented her. But in spite of these and in spite of her impending deportation to Poland, she ultimately discovered a peace that she claimed was neither indifference or helplessness in the face of suffering and evil. For in Etty's inner life, she claimed that she would be with the hungry, with the ill-treated and the dying, every day, and yet also with the jasmine and with that piece of sky beyond my window. Every day, she discovered there is room for everything in a single life. For belief in God and for a miserable end. 

In the end, Etty Hillesum’s inner life led her to the conviction that all must turn inward with sharp, humble eyes if the world was ever to recover from the current hatred. She conveyed this passionate conviction to friend and former lover, Klaas Smelik Sr.:

Klaas, all I really wanted to say is this: we have so much work to do on ourselves that we shouldn’t even be thinking of hating our so-called enemies. . . And I repeat with the same old passion, although I am gradually beginning to think that I am being tiresome, “It is the only thing we can do, Klaas, I see no alternative, each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others. And remember that every atom of hate we add to this world makes it still more inhospitable. And you, Klaas, dogged old class fighter that you have always been, dismayed and astonished at the same time, say, “But that—that is nothing but Christianity!”

That is nothing but Christianity. And that, I believe, is everthing. Turning inward, facing our own real and present demons, and destroying all we seek to destroy in others is a curse because it’s hugely painful. It’s also, perhaps, the greatest blessing because it’s hugely redemptive. As Klaas Smelik proclaimed, this attitude and subsequent act is what it means to be real Christians. That is, Christ calls us to love our enemies as ourselves, to see and love their brokenness as He would. Etty came to understand that this would only be possible if we all lived inner lives that invited this kind of self-destruction, the kind that obliterated every atom of hate.

Ultimately, the magnificence of Etty Hillesum’s inner life was birthed from and sustained with a paradox, and her life and death gave testimony to this. She could love herself and the world, yet criticize both. She could find refuge in her inner life and also find pain. She could live gloriously in the sanctuary of her neighborhood at the same time that she projected herself into the concentration camps. She could be righteously indignant and yet at peace.

Etty’s diary has had a profound impact on me. I find myself thinking about her inner struggles and marveling at her wisdom often. As I read, I couldn’t help but think that I wished I could be more like her, that we all could be more like her. As she was packed into a cattle car to be taken to Auschwitz, witnesses reported that she was singing. As I consider our present troubled world, I believe that her words have as much value–perhaps more–than they did in 1943:

Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it toward others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.

I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world. John 16: 33