My Cousin Todd and Anne Frank

My cousin Todd has always been an old soul and one of the kindest souls and people you will meet. He was my favorite person in the world when I was little and he remains such and I loved hanging out with him and learning so much from him. I learned all about the Halloween movies (1 through 5), I learned about Freddy Kruger, I learned about The Beatles, The Doors, Janis Joplin, Pink Floyd, The Grateful Dead, and all things related to art. His respect for all living things, human and animal, was noticed by my small impressive mind.

I’ll never forget thinking how amazingly grown up he was when I saw him reading The Diary of Anne Frank and I remember him telling me about the book. Walking me through her families ordeal and persecution. I remember not understanding the gravity of that era at the time, but I remember the way her diary ended and I’ve always held on to those words.

If you’re not familiar with Anne Frank, please take time to research who she was (beyond the lovely Justin Bieber visit to her house years ago). In a nutshell, this was a young Jewish girl who was forced to hide, with her family, in Amsterdam after escaping Nazi-controlled Germany. Anne and her family hunkered down in rooms that were hidden behind bookshelves in the building where her father worked. The family was eventually betrayed and split up and taken to concentration camps after the Nazis had taken control of the Netherlands. Anne died in a concentration camp in 1945. Her diary was found back in Amsterdam and documents her life between 1942 and August of 1944—when she was taken to her eventual death.

In her diary, she said “there is an urge and rage in people to destroy, to kill, to murder, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated and grown, will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again.”

I, like millions of other people, have spent the last few days watching the incredibly disturbing videos from Baton Rouge and Minneapolis. I don’t understand the incidents. I don’t understand these deaths. I’m sickened by these videos and these situations. I feel for the families who lost two fathers, friends, brothers, uncles, husbands, boyfriends, sons.

Would these incidents have happened with white passengers or suspects involved? I have no idea. Sadly, probably not. I am not blind enough to not recognize a problem with law enforcement on some level. I am not ignorant enough to watch these two videos and some of the videos from the last year and not feel that something is incredibly off with the way these situations are handled.

I, like millions of other people, have spent tonight reading and watching videos from the sniper-style assassination deaths of four police officers and the injuries of 7 other police officers in Dallas. I don’t understand how a peaceful protest turns into a war zone. I don’t understand the incidents. I’m sickened by the videos. I feel for the families who lost fathers, friends, brothers, uncles, husbands, boyfriends, sons.

And I find myself reverting back to Todd’s room in Northern California. Listening to him talk about peace. Wanting to understand what a hippie really was, but loving that he seemed to fit the mold. And I wonder, did Anne Frank see our time?

Have we undergone a great change? Has everything that has been built, cultivated, and grown been disfigured and destroyed now? Will we, as mankind, have to begin all over again? Are we at that point? Are we so broken that the only fix is to start over?

Generalizations will always drive me up a wall. Not all black people are suspects and, obviously, shouldn’t be treated as such right off the bat. Not all police officers are murderous, power hungry racists and shouldn’t be treated as such right from the start. Even more dangerous than any gun, knife, punch, kick, or bomb are the generalizations that we as humans throw on other brothers and sisters in our mankind family. Anne was right. There is an urge to kill. To destroy. And to murder. And I would add that as a response to these frightening and life-altering events, there is an urge to generalize. And that scares me more than any physical threat that exists.

I wish I was as strong as Anne Frank. I wish I had half as much courage and hope that she had to her last day on this earth in one of the most heinous and awful times in history. To think that Anne Frank, through all that she experienced in her short life, uttered these profound words:

“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.”

A 16-year-old girl wrote those profound words at a time when her family was suffering some of the worst persecution a group of people have had to endure. A 16-year-old girl who should have been enjoying whatever kids were doing in the 1940s, who had to be scared, who had to be distraught, chose to keep her ideals because she still believed in mankind. She still believed that people are good at heart.

I want to believe that. I want to feel that way. And our world makes it so incredibly difficult to. I believe Todd feels that. I believe Anne feels that still and would stand by her words.

Tonight, our country feels so divided. Which, sadly, doesn’t feel much different than the last little while. And maybe before we talk about this race killed that race or this race pulled a gun on that race. We talk about all the races involved experiencing the exact same thing tonight as each other—an empty side of the bed, an empty bedroom, a void in their hearts, and a family member to say goodbye to. And that hurts. And maybe our country can take that hurt that we all feel and use it to unify because people are really good at heart. Maybe we can take that hurt and avoid completely having to start over as mankind.

Like any dad, I want to be the hero to my daughters. Of course! But tonight, I’m committed to helping my daughters discover admiration for real heroes like Anne Frank. I want my daughters to have the Anne Frank approach to humanity. And the Todd approach to life. They’re going to grow up in a world that has terrible things happening far too often by people. And I want them to believe, deep in their hearts and souls, that in spite of everything they see and hear and experience, people are really good at heart.  

Now. Don’t let me down, people.