promise

She saw him sharpening that dagger. "Are you going to do it again?"

He didn't answer her.

"Didn't you say you wouldn't kill again? Haven't you been staying away from the affairs of the world?"

He had. "But I can't take it anymore. Not when our people are being insulted, our values taken as a joke, all that we believe in and hold dear being attacked by these people who don't understand single thing."

"Don't do it. Please. Don't stain your hands with their blood."

There was hesitation in his eyes.

"Don't do it. For me."

**

There are nice people and people who aren't. Likewise, there are hypocrites and people who are sincere. Sometimes you are lucky and meet the nice and sincere ones. Of course one isn't lucky all the time.

And sometimes things happen to us. Things which shouldn't, because we wouldn't do it if we were them. Our values and all that we believe in come under attack.

Of course we would love to retaliate. And maybe we have a right to that, because if you don't defend yourself, no one will.

But I realize that there is more to life, than this endless politicking. The Zug der Erinnerung exhibition on the children deported during the Nazi times really woke me up. There is more to life than all these. Life isn't a competition with others; people who treat it as that don't understand a single thing.

Life is about living. For yourself, for the people and things which matter to you.

I wrote in the guestbook then. And I ought to remember what I wrote, and do what I said. Because it's a promise.

It isn't easy because we are not saints. Nobody promised that it would be easy, but let's do it, not because we have lost, not because we have given up hope, but because we have been enlightened. Let us do it also in the knowledge that we know, and Heaven knows. Whatever else doesn't matter, because we only need to answer to ourselves.

And when it really gets difficult, always remember that last line of Wilhelmus.

heb ik altijd geëerd

I have always honoured.