words for today - thomas merton

Why do we have to spend our lives striving to be something that we would never want to be, if we only knew what we wanted?  Why do we waste our time doing things which, if we only stopped to think about them, are just the opposite of what we were made for?

We cannot be ourselves unless we know ourselves.  But self-knowledge is impossible when thoughtless and automatic activity keeps our souls in confusion.  In order to know ourselves it is not necessary to cease all activity in order to think about ourselves.  That would be useless, and would probably do most of us a great deal of harm.  But we have to cut down our activity to the point where we can think calmly and reasonably about our actions.  We cannot begin to know ourselves until we can see the real reasons why we do the things we do, and we cannot be ourselves until our actions correspond to our intentions, and our intentions are appropriate to our own situation.  But that is enough.  It is not necessary that we succeed in everything.  

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We cannot make the best of what we are, if our hearts are always divided between what we are and what we are not.