Aaron's Blog

Idealism and Courage

Posted Jun. 12th, 2007

Today is June 12, and if Anne Frank were still alive today, it would be her 79th birthday. That means she was born almost exactly a year after my own grandmother, who will celebrate her 80th birthday in another week and a half. Anne’s life was highlighted today in my daily reader, and it brought me back to when I first read her diary as a young college student. “If God lets me live,” she wrote, “I shall not remain insignificant, I shall work in the world and for mankind!”

When I first read those words, I remember feeling a fire burning in my own heart—a fire that so yearned to make a difference in the world. I believe that a similar fire burns in everyone’s heart. It’s more than youthful idealism, which at times I think is uttered as an excuse for the growing sadness that grips many of us as adults when we look at our lives and wonder if we have really made a difference. “Youthful idealism” becomes the salve that we put on the wounds of our own hearts, that have always burned to be more courageous but are limited by so many fears, doubts and insecurities.

I find it interesting that it is often alongside the imminence of death that people find the courage to speak what is most true in their hearts. Recently I finished A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali, which is a brutal and heartrending story about the genocide. The real treasures of the book, for me, were the diary entries written by one of the main characters as she awaited her own death. In such plain and simple terms, she wrote of the heart’s search for love—for light in the darkness—and ultimately of her own despair of truly finding any life amidst the pain and suffering. This stands in contrast to Anne Frank’s own words, who wrote “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart . . . I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right.” Of course the difference between these two courageous women is that one was writing from the midst of her horrible suffering while the other was awaiting it. Ultimately, they were both writing about the resiliency of hope—and its limits.

The question I ask myself today is what I can do to rekindle my own sense of hope. I’ve received some really touching emails from friends and families about how proud of us they are. And while that is incredibly encouraging, I think that, at times, it is easier to look from the outside of someone else’s life and idealize what they are doing. The fact is, my life here is no less riddled with doubts, insecurities, mistakes and frustrations than it was in the States. My mind, too, questions the motives of my heart. I struggle daily with cynicism, which is really just a defense mechanism that I use to dampen the pain of losing hope in humanity. Remembering Anne Frank, and countless others like her who have witnessed to the boundless endurance of the human heart, helps release me from the burdens that I carry (which are really quite light in comparison).

Echoing some of her final words, written in the closing days of hiding and aware that her time was nearly up, Anne wrote, “In the meantime, I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out.” What to some echoes of youthful idealism, to me rings true of courageous optimism.

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