Joy can only be real if people look upon their life as a service and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.

Happiness aimed at directly tends to thin out, because the question of whether you are happy yet keeps interrupting the thing that would have made you so. Joy shows up sideways, while you are busy with something that matters to someone other than you. A task that needs you gives the day a shape your own preferences cannot. Being useful is not self-denial; it is what stops you spending the day checking on yourself.

Find one thing this week that would not get done unless you did it, and do it without mentioning it. Notice how the hours feel afterwards.