You must not succumb to constant fears that you are doing nothing valuable in life or nothing commensurate with your desires and God's grace. I believe you are doing enough – much more than is visible. But why be disturbed by these questions at all? Is it not enough to nurture great ambitions within and strive faithfully to realize them, so that we have the right to rely on God to ensure their ultimate success? Perhaps strive even more to lose yourself in God in all things, until you no longer even want to know whether you are doing a lot or a little in this world, and you will just be happy to feel Him within you, at the beginning and at the end of every desire and every action.
(Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ /1881–1955/, letter from the front, to his cousin, August 5, 1917;
quoted from the book Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Birth of Thought. Letters 1914–1919, Malvern 2021)
