It’s important to take a stand. To fight for what you believe in. And fight against what’s wrong. But the everpresent danger in fighting your enemy is becoming the enemy. Hatred can colonize your inner life just as your enemy can occupy your outer one. How do you resist without letting your adversary live in your head, consuming your heart?

Consider this:

During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, as anti-Jewish measures closed in around her, Etty Hillesum, a young Jewish woman in Amsterdam, kept a series of diaries, documenting what was happening, and how she felt about it. She didn’t express outrage, or anger, instead, she reached for something else, a freedom from the brutality and hatred around her. She resisted, not just what was happening around her, but allowing the brutality of the world to harden her. “I know that those who hate have good reason to do so,” she wrote, “But why should we always have to choose the cheapest and easiest way?”

She held onto that truth, even as she voluntarily accompanied her fellow Jews to the Westerbork transit camp, and eventually to Auschwitz, where she was killed. 

Her diaries—discovered after her death at age 29—have become sacred texts for many. They offer us a roadmap of generosity and openness, a beautiful portrait of a sould refusing to go numb.

Putting it into Play


There is a time and reason to fight and to take a stand. But if we define ourselves only in opposition, we become captured by the thing we resist. Saying, “I won’t be like my mother” doesn’t define who you are; it keeps your gaze fixed on the other, not on the life you wish to create.

The power of Etty Hillesum’s example is that she shows us that opposition without aspiration isn’t enough. We can oppose without hatred, and resist without losing our freedom. Our inner world is something no external force can claim.