The measure of our identity, of our being (the two are the same), is the amount of our love for God.
The more we love earthly things – reputation, importance, pleasure, easy and success – the less we love God.
Our identity is dissipated among things that have no value, and we are drowned and die in trying to live in the material things we would like to possess, or in the projects we would like to complete to objectify the work of our own wills.
Then, we we come to die, we find we have squandered all our love (that is, our being) on things of nothingness, and that we are nothing, we are death…
Let me then withdraw all my love from scattered, vain things – the desire to be read and praised as a writer, or to be a successful teacher…or to live in ease in some beautiful place…
My life is measured by my love of God, and that, in turn, is measured by my love for the least of His children.
And that love is not an abstract benevolence: it must mean sharing their tribulation.
(Merton, Journals, September 3, 1941, I.398-99)