who was Anne Frank?

During my lunch today, I decided to site outside on a bench on the Hudson River. It felt like 100 degrees outside, but under a tree next to the water with a breeze (yes, a hot, almost smelly breeze, but a breeze), it wasn't so bad. I have been reading Anne Frank for about 3 weeks now, and wanted to take the lunch hour to myself, and finish it outside, get out of the office and away from the creme colored walls that surround me all day. Reading the last 20 or so pages outside, in public, was probably not the best idea I have ever had... but it already happened, and everyone saw me cry. Not the first time, and not the last.

I was hysterical reading the last few pages, I could not contain myself. This book, journal, that I was suppose to read  as a kid, has more of an effect on me now than I think it would have if I read it in middle school or high school. I have learned about the Holocaust my entire life, being religiously Jewish, growing up culturally Jewish, I have been to the Holocaust memorial in Israel and in Washington D.C, my grandmother and her sisters were Holocaust survives. All of that knowledge, and all of my learnings have come to a head, just today, during a hot Thursday afternoon lunch on the Hudson.

What I realized, what overcame me, is that Anne Frank, the 16 year old Jewish girl, was just living her life, day to day, dealing whit all of the problems normal 15 year old girls go through: fights with her parents, crushes on boys, changing, morphing and growing, yes, she could have become a great writer, who changed the world with her fictional stories. She was not a humanitarian, she was not a soldier, she was not a queen, she was a girl, trying to figure out her life, and just live it. And it was taken away from her- she was robbed of her future. No one on this earth has the right to take away someone else's future. That idea, that statement, I cannot get out of my mind.

How cruel can people be, and in all her struggle, near the end of her time in hiding, she even said, "It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart." Even with the terror right outside her door, and the threat of her future being stripped right from her hands, she had the faith in people, faith in the human. She saw the top of cruelty from her little window, and even then, she believed at the end, people are good. How amazing. Up until the day of her last entry, she kept growing, changing opinions, maturing, learning and absorbing everything.

In my head, we are all a bit of Anne Frank. And what I learned from her, listen to my undying craving for more and the understanding of my own internal struggle. She struggled to find who she was, going back and fourth, even having a "good Anne" and a "bad Anne" and the balancing act between the two.

What I am going to do in memory of Anne, and the other 6 million, never stop finding my 'more'. because Anne, and so many others, did not get the chance to continue their searching. Its the least I can do, as a Jewish woman, as a 23 year old, as a US citizen, as a human resident in our crazy and ever changing world. 

Peace, love and my more,
B