You neglect to cheerfully engage in the work which God has left you to do. You overlook the common, simple duties lying directly in your pathway, and your mind wanders off to some greater work, which you imagine will be more congenial to your taste, and which will supply the lack in your life, the barrenness in your soul. You will surely be disappointed here. The work which God has left you to do is to take up the common, everyday duties which are right around you and do the plain, homely duties of life cheerfully, not mechanically, but having your heart in what you do, performing with your heart, as well as with your hands, the simple duties which lie before you. (3T 330.1) MC VC

You do not study to make others happy; your eyes are not open, trying to discern what little things you can do, what little attentions in the daily courtesies of life you can show to your parents and the members of the household. You have felt too much that it was a virtue to shut yourself away from the family, and brood over your unhappy thoughts and unhappy experience, gathering thorns, and taking satisfaction in wounding yourself with them. You indulge in a dreamy habit, which must be broken up. You leave duties undone. Work which you ought to do to relieve others you neglect for the pleasure of indulging your own unhappy musings. You do not know yourself. Up to duty! Arouse yourself and take up your neglected duty. Redeem the past by future faithfulness. Take hold of the work before you, and, in the faithful performance of duty, you will forget yourself and will not have time to muse and become gloomy, and feel disagreeable and unhappy. (3T 330.2) MC VC