“Don’t try to be useful. Try to be yourself; that is enough, and that makes all the difference.”

Ask a flower in the field: ‘Do you feel useful? After all you do nothing but produce the same flowers over and over.’

And the flower will answer: ‘I am beautiful, and beauty is my reason for living.’

Ask the river: ‘Do you feel useful, given that all you do is keep flowing in the same direction?’

And the river will answer: ‘I'm not trying to be useful; I'm trying to be a river.’ Nothing in this world is useless in the eyes of God.

…

Don’t try to be useful. Try to be yourself; that is enough, and that makes all the difference.

- From the book Manuscript Found in Accra by Paulo Coelho

Thank you, Bonnie, for sending me this quote when I needed to hear it.