… contacts with others invariably alter you, even if only a little. We are like chemicals processed all day long and constantly compounded with other materials. One great continuous process. But which part of you is the original element? It’s almost frightening when you suddenly start to think about such matters. That you pass through the many hours of the day and at the end you are a different person from the one you were at the beginning. [An Interrupted Life: the Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941-3, Persephone Books, London, 1999 p. 148]
I came across this the other day. It is always heartening when you find that others are on the same wavelength. Etty says ‘contacts’, I would have said relationships, but it comes to the same thing. We are all inextricably linked, and it is her awareness of this linkage that drives Etty to go with her people to the concentration camp when she might have escaped. She sees herself as a link with God, a conduit through which His love is expressed.
It is really very interesting reading both Etty Hillesum’s diaries and those of Thomas Merton at the same time. At first they seem a bit banal, other people’s preoccupations, not really of much interest to anyone else. But, as you become more and more immersed in their lives, even if it is only a small part, you are drawn into their minds and feelings. They cease to be historical characters and become real people, and you begin to be able to read between the lines and see how their underlying feelings and preoccupations colour their responses to particular situations. You can also see how they develop, how what was initially just an idea, or an insight, or an inchoate feeling, grows and expands to become a major theme governing their personality, their relationships with others and how they react to events. Etty is particularly fascinating because religion played little or no part in her upbringing and development. Her religious awareness develops slowly, at first something so intensely private that she hardly admits it to herself but which soon becomes inextricably mixed with her reflections on her relationships with others and with nature.