“Living a purposeful life requires a change of heart, a conversion. Such a conversion may be marked by a sudden inner change, or it can take place through a long, quiet process of transformation. But it always begins with an inner experience of discontent which has been transformed.

Our conflicts and pains, our tasks and promises, our families and friends, our activities and projects, our hopes and aspirations, no longer appear to us a fatiguing variety of things that we can barely keep together, but rather as affirmations and revelations of the new vision within us.

All these other things, which so occupied and preoccupied us, now come as gifts or challenges that strengthen and deepen the new life that we have discovered. This does not mean that the purposeful life makes things easier or takes our struggles and pains away. Sometimes it even becomes more intense. But our attention is no longer directed to the “more or less.” What matters is to listen attentively and to go obediently where we are being led, whether to a joyful or a painful place.”

#HenriNouwen