“It is useless to try to make peace with ourselves by being pleased with everything we have done. In order to settle down in the quiet of our own being we must learn to be detached from the results of our own activity. We must withdraw ourselves, to some extent, from the effects that are beyond our control and be content with the good will and the work that are the quiet expression of our inner life. We must be content to live without watching ourselves live, to work without expecting any immediate reward, to love without an instantaneous satisfaction, and to exist without any special recognition.
It is only when we are detached from ourselves that we can be at peace with ourselves. We cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great. For our own idea of greatness is illusory, and if we pay too much attention to it we will be lured out of the peace and stability of the being God gave us as we seek to live a myth we have created for ourselves. It is, therefore, a very great thing to be little, which is to say, to be ourselves. And when we are truly ourselves we lose most of the futile self-consciousness that keeps us constantly comparing ourselves with others in order to see how big we are.
Our Christian destiny is, in fact, a great one: but we cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great.”
[Thomas Merton, The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, 1955; with thanks to Karl Johnson]