Etty Hillesum

"It is possible to suffer with dignity and without. I mean: most of us in the West don't understand the art of suffering and experience a thousand fears instead. We cease to be alive, being full of fear, bitterness, hatred, and despair. God knows, it's only too easy to understand why. But... I am in Poland every day, on the battlefields, if that is what one can call them. I often see visions of poisonous green smoke; I am with the hungry, with the ill-treated and the dying, every day, but I am also with the jasmine and with that piece of the sky beyond my window; there is room for everything in a single life... I sometimes bow my head under the great burden that weighs down on me, but even as I bow my head I also feel the need, almost mechanically, to fold my hands. And so I can sit for hours and know everything and bear anything and grow stronger in the bearing of it, and at the same time feel sure that life is beautiful and worth living and meaningful. Despite everything."

-- Etty Hillesum, written in Holland one year before her death in Auschwitz, 1942.

I was just reading for my Theology class and this quote really resonated with me. As I grow older I am finding it harder and harder to believe that from all the suck that happens, I grow stronger. I feel like that might be something I tell myself and that other people might see in me, but I always feel the same. I feel so sempiternal. I bet I will start to notice soon, if Etty was alive today I know I would have a huge friend-crush on her.

Something beautiful from this past weekend, Taken at the parliament building in Victoria BC by a good friend of mine, Scott Young.

I tried to make a new playlist but 8tracks won't let me make one with more than two songs by one artist, and the playlist consists of four twenty one pilots songs here it is below with links, it is my fall playlist that I have been nonstop listening to.

1. Oh, Ms. Believer twenty one pilots

2. Kiss Me Ed Sheeran

3. Screen twenty one pilots

4. This is Gospel Panic! at the Disco

5. Addict with a Pen twenty one pilots

6. Vegas Lights Panic! at the Disco

7. Global Concepts Robert DeLong

8. Fake You Out twenty one pilots

~~~

Any Seattleites out there, Robert and Panic! are playing this upcoming January, just saying.