In Memory of Anne Frank

I’ve been feeling pretty short-tempered lately. Honestly, I’m not sure exactly why, either. Maybe it’s the burgeoning summer heat. Maybe it’s the heated political climate we’re living in. I don’t know; all I know is that my once fresh outlook and optimism has turned sour, heading straight into pessimistic territory. I’m looking at a world that feels so glass half empty…and it’s frustrating! I don’t like this person I’ve become. Maybe you feel the same and aren’t too happy with it, either. So I suppose it might just be fate that some Anne Frank quotes would inspire me today, on what would have been her 88th birthday…

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”

“I know what I want, I have a goal, an opinion, I have a religion and love. Let me be myself and then I am satisfied. I know that I’m a woman, a woman with inward strength and plenty of courage.”

“Women should be respected as well! Generally speaking, men are held in great esteem in all parts of the world, so why shouldn’t women have their share? Soldiers and war heroes are honored and commemorated, explorers are granted immortal fame, martyrs are revered, but how many people look upon women too as soldiers?”

“It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”

“I don’t think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.”

Today also marks the day Anne started her diary in 1942. She received her diary as a gift on her 13th birthday and even years after I first read The Diary of Anne Frank, I’m amazed at her poise, her grace and her worldly outlook. She was truly wise beyond her years, writing about things in just three years that most of us never experience over our entire lifetime.

I mean, here she was, going through the unimaginable, and she still managed to not let the outside world change who she was. It would have been easy — and quite understandable! — to become bitter and just let your heart fill with hate. But Anne? She refused to do that. And in this already-hateful world, I think we all could learn something from her. Getting mad and angry? Maybe that’s just taking the easy way out. I don’t know about you, but I want to be better than that. I don’t want to let bitterness consume me. I want to rise about that. I’m not exactly sure how to do that yet, but I know there’s a way somehow.

How do you keep from getting jaded, friends? What keeps your glass half full these days? xoxo