Thinking gets you nowhere. It may be a fine and noble aid in academic studies, but you can't think your way out of emotional difficulties. That takes something altogether different. You have to make yourself passive then, and just listen. Re-establish contact with a slice of eternity.
Etty HillesumI do believe it is possible to create, even without ever writing a word or painting a picture, by simply molding oneโs inner life. And that too is a deed.
Etty HillesumI know and share the many sorrows a human being can experience, but I do not cling to them; they pass through me, like life itself, as a broad eternal stream...and life continues.
Etty HillesumSuch words as 'God' and 'Death' and 'Suffering' and 'Eternity' are best forgotten. We have to become as simple and as wordless as the growing corn or the falling rain. We must just be.
Etty HillesumI don't think I have nerves of steel, far from it, but I can certainly stand up to things. I am not afraid to look suffering straight in the eyes.
Etty HillesumI feel like a small battlefield in which the problems, or some of the problems, of our time are being fought out. All one can hope to do is keep oneself humbly available, to allow oneself to be a battlefield. After all, the problems must be accommodated, have somewhere to struggle and come to rest and we, poor little humans, must put our inner space at their service and not run away.
Etty Hillesum