"One of my heroes is a woman named Etty Hillesum, a young Jewish woman who lived in Amsterdam in the 1930s and ’40s. Her early diaries reveal her to be immature and self-centered. But as the Nazi occupation lasted and the horrors of the Holocaust mounted, she became more generous, kind, warm and ultimately heroic toward those who were being sent off to the death camps. She volunteered to work at a labor camp called Westerbork, where Dutch Jews were held before being transferred to the death camps in the east. There she cared for the ill, tended to those confined to the punishment barracks and became known in the camp for her sparkling compassion, her selfless love. Her biographer wrote that “it was her practice of paying deep attention which transformed her.” It was her ability to really observe others — their anxieties, their cares and their attachments — that enabled her to enter into their lives and serve them.

"It did not save her. In 1943, she herself was sent to Auschwitz and was murdered. But she left a legacy: what it looks like to shine and grow and be a beacon of humanity, even in the worst imaginable circumstances."

Whether your candidate won or lost, we are all challenged to find our way back to each other, our sense of connection and community, and our dutry to keep the spark of life ablaze within us.

Click here to read David Brook's full column.