I have not as thoroughly identified with an author as the one I’m reading now. I’m reading the diary of Elly Hillesum. The published diary is so true to her German text that the translator plays a bigger role in its English publication than does the editor. However, the editor states that if he had published her entire diary, the book would be over 400 pages long, This book, An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Elly Hillesum, 1941-1943 is 223 pages. Elly, a Dutch Jew, wrote her diary during World War II. She was 27 years old in 1941 and died at age 29 at Auschwitz in 1943.
I started writing and publishing to Facebook nearly fifteen years ago. The first story I published was about the death of my beautiful mixed shepherd, Maggie. I received several favorable comments about the story so a few days later I published something else. I have now published several hundred stories over that period of years. One big difference between Elly’s diary and what I write is that she is willing to be a lot more open and honest about everything. It’s not that I’m dishonest. I don’t make the stories up. It's just that she delves into her deepest beliefs, thoughts and feelings about everything that matters to her. What I write and what you read is the tip of the iceberg. Elly relates the iceberg. Maybe I’d be more correct to say that I’m the Titanic and very much aware of the icebergs.
I’ve been rather discouraged of late with my writing and publishing. Blogspot, the blog platform I use, has been telling me for years that about 120 people read my posts. Once over 900 people read my story about the closing of a church. I enjoy knowing that people read and benefit from my writings. But a couple of months ago either something happened to the way Facebook distributes my posts or Blogspot is telling me wrong about the number of people reading. It tells me that only about twenty people read my posts on any given day. I’ve figured out the problem is with Facebook and not Blogspot and I've let that affect my writing.
This morning in a session with my counselor, she suggested that I write a journal. I realize that I could benefit from a pen and paper journal, but I told her that I have a journal and that I post to it about once a week. It’s called In a Different Light and I jot down my beliefs, hopes, feelings, and past and present experiences. Maybe not all of them, but a lot. So I decided again that I don’t write what I write for you. I write for me. It doesn’t matter if 500 people read it or nobody reads it, the things I write need to be written. As Joseph Campbell stated, I must continually rediscover the moving power of my life. The words matter not because they’re read, but because they’re written.
An irony of Elly’s diary is that she states from time to time that she would like to write a great book. She feels destined to write a great book. I seriously doubt that she knew that she was writing it. Maybe one of her last thoughts in the gas chamber was, “I wish I had written my book.” Would she have written all that she wrote if she had known her words would become a best seller? Although the illusion she creates is that she’s writing to me, and I would guess most of her readers feel that way, she was more than likely just writing to herself.
The truth is there is no such thing as "an interrupted life." Esther "Elly" Hillesum was born on January 25, 1914 and she died on November 30, 1945. That was her whole life. Her life ended that day at the hands of the Nazis, but it wasn't interrupted. The affect her 29 years had on people then and now cannot be measured. I have a birth date and one day will have an end date. The challenge is to live the dash as meaningfully as possible for myself and those around me. Meanwhile, if I help bring meaning for you, we're both better off.
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