In a world overwhelmed with daily reports of wars, natural disasters, and political corruption, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep from descending into despair, or to visualize a future with any prospect of improvement.

But young Anne Frank managed to hold on to a sliver of hope while hiding out from the Nazis during World War II, knowing that at any moment they might find her and her family in their secret room (which they ultimately did). She kept her sanity and spirit by writing her deepest thoughts and feelings in a diary, which was posthumously published after the war and remains a source of inspiration to this day.

One of her entries expressed her own difficulty in retaining a measure of hope:

“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.”

– Anne Frank, “The Diary of a Young Girl”

Anne was barely into her teens when she began her diary, and it is easy to dismiss her optimism as youthful inexperience and naiveté. But her writing exhibits an intelligence and a maturity far beyond her years; so maybe she sensed something that we don’t, or that we have forgotten.

Maybe, after all, the vast majority of individuals are inherently decent, and the evils now being perpetrated by a relative handful of tyrants will — like Anne’s war, and all of the world’s previous “times of trouble” — pass into history, to be replaced by an era of peace and prosperity.

But it is up to us — the peaceable majority — to bring that about. And, if and when it does happen, it will also be up to us to keep it that way.

Anne would have wanted that.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
3/7/26