I really need to become a bit simpler. To let myself live more.

A poem by Etty Hilesum

Photo by Riccardo Mion on Unsplash

I really need to become a bit simpler. To let myself live more.

To stop wanting my life to bear its fruit right now.

But I’ve found the remedy.

All I need to do is to squat on the floor, in a corner,

and, all snuggled up, to listen inside myself.

It is not thinking that will help me.

Thinking, it is a great and beautiful occupation for the studies,

but it is not what gets you out of difficult psychological situations.

One needs something else.

One needs to be able to become passive, to start listening.

Retrieving contact with a little piece of eternity.

Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life: The Diaries, 1941–1943; and Letters