I'm Gretchen Rubin and this is a little happier.

Ever since I read this passage from Leonard Wolf's memoir, it has haunted me.

Now Leonard Wolf was an English political theorist, author, publisher, and long-serving civil

servant.

He was also the husband of the author of Virginia Wolf.

And he published his memoirs, and in them he wrote, at the end of his life, looking back

at the age of 88, over the 57 years of my political work in England, knowing what I

aimed at and the results, meditating on the history of Britain and the world since 1914.

I see clearly that I achieved practically nothing.

I must have in a long life ground through between 150,000 and 200,000 hours of perfectly

useless work.

Though all that I tried to do politically was completely futile and ineffective and

unimportant, for me personally it was right and important that I should do it.

And I thought this was such a good reminder that it's right to do the right thing, even

when it doesn't seem to make any difference.

And we never can really know what the effect of our actions will be.

In the world or on ourselves.

I'm Gretchen Rubin and I hope this makes your week a little happier.