All human beings throughout the history of humanity, in different ways and in the most diverse contexts, have experienced the pain and suffering that accompany life. Our own reality is no different; we are permanently “exposed.” Understanding and approaching this reality, however, is different for different people.

In this reflection, I will consider the evolution of the meaning of suffering in Etty Hillesum's writings. Her personal experience and her relationship to silence and wisdom are written in the diaries, and every word contributes to our understanding of the meaning of life today where we find ourselves in the midst of multiple crises and human conflicts.

Much has been written on Etty Hillesum. Nevertheless, it is my intention to deepen our understanding of the experience of suffering, an experience woven silently and yet tightly into Hillesum's life by the circumstances of her times. Etty Hillesum was an eyewitness to the rupture of society and the collapse of all that seemed consolidated in the Western world, and especially in Europe. Hillesum wrote of physical pain in her body, of the pain of impotence when observing the pain of others, and she wrote of the exponential growth of suffering amid the meaninglessness of war. These same realities endure today and even increase. We consider pain and suffering as mutually implied and we note that pain is also caused by the negative, by what is not present… by indifference, abandonment, loss, or the lack of love.

Fernando Bárcena has written that in pain there is “an excess of existence,” and surely this is so. The stories of the many who suffer attest to this. One of them was Etty Hillesum. While our whole existence is weighted with suffering, in body, mind, and spirit, the question is, what do we do with it?