"Do not depend on the hope of results"

Thomas Merton, to a friend:

"Do not depend on the hope of results … you may have to face the fact that your work
will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results
opposite to what you expect. as you get used to this idea, you start more and more to
concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. …you gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific
people. … in the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything."
-quoted in Margaret Wheatley, "The Place Beyond Fear and Hope"  PDF