dear young activists,

On the wall of my bathroom, just to the left of the sink, there is a worn piece of white paper with the following printed on it. (It serves as pretty good food for thought while brushing my teeth)

'Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, especially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work may be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all... if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get more used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there, too, a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea, and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything...'

Thomas Merton (letter to a young activist)