- It is being done by millions of people and that's why they are all miserable. We have a very wrong a priori idea that the other is there to fulfill our needs; that is the basic problem. The other is not there to fulfill your needs. If he does, feel grateful; if he does not, there is no question of complaint. Why should he?
His life is his, your life is yours. He is not born in the world just to fulfill your needs. He has to live his life. If by chance he is fulfilling your needs, feel grateful; that is a miracle. It need not have happened but it is happening -- feel grateful. But when it doesn't happen, there is nothing to cry about. It has to be understood that there is no need for it to happen. But we go on doing just the opposite: when somebody fulfills your needs you never feel grateful; you take it for granted. And when he does not fulfill your need you are angry, you are violent, you are destructive.
But these are the patterns of remaining in hell. If you choose to remain there, then that is your life! If you want to remain in hell, remain in hell. Otherwise it is a simple phenomenon It is not a question of repeating a certain pattern; it is seeing the foundation. The pattern is not so important. The pattern is based on a certain understanding, really, a misunderstanding.
Somehow we have gathered this idea; and there is a reason why it has happened to everybody. A child is born; the mother takes every care of the child, all needs are fulfilled. And the child thinks that he has some authority. Naturally, all his needs are fulfilled, so he takes it for granted that the whole existence exists just to fulfill his needs. For years it continues: the mother is always fulfilling the needs; the father is always there, and everybody takes care of the child. They have to take care because the child is so helpless, otherwise the child will die! But the child is learning a trick -- a very dangerous trick which will keep him always miserable. He is learning a strategy: slowly slowly the idea is settling in his heart that he is so special that everybody has to take care of him. If they take care of him, that's perfectly okay.
There is no need even to say thank you; it's how things should be. And if they don't take care, then the child creates a tantrum. He cries and shouts and breaks things and forces them to follow his desires.
But your parents are your parents and the whole world is not your parent. When you move in the world and you fall in love with a man, he is not your father, you are not his mother. You have to see that he is a stranger, you are a stranger. It is a really only by the grace of god that you have met. Make each other's life as happy as possible, but there is no possibility of creating an expectation.
Expectations kill -- they kill all joy and all love. Don't expect anything! How can you expect from a stranger? Just because you have lived with him for a few days, can you expect anything of him? The stranger is a stranger; whether you live with him for a few minutes, a few hours, a few days or a few years, it makes no difference. It is only a question of time. How can time make it different? -- a stranger is a stranger.
And if he does something for you, feel grateful; if he does not, that's perfectly right. Don't start fighting! Otherwise, sooner or later he will escape, unless he himself is a kind of masochist. If he wants to be tortured by you, then it is perfectly good, he will remain with you; otherwise he will not. A healthy person will escape.
My own observation is this, that so many people go on clinging to each other because they are unhappy. It is some kind of neurosis; it is not out of health. If the world becomes a little healthier, more psychologically sane, people will not cling. People will relate, but there will be no relationship. And to relate is beautiful; to create a relationship is ugly, because with relationships come all kinds of expectations. When you relate, there is no question.
You meet a stranger in the train and you start talking -- that is relating. You can even make love to the stranger, but that is relating. You don't even know his name, you don't know where he is going, who he is. In the middle of the night he will get out of the train at some station. You may not meet him again, ever, but those moments were beautiful and that memory will persist because there was no expectation, nothing. It was just out of nowhere that two persons had come close and then went on their own ways, creating no bondage for each other. In fact, even if you live with a man for years together, this should remain the case. Keep alert and let each moment be new.
You have to change -- not the pattern; you have to change the foundation. The pattern you have been trying to change many times, and it is not changing because the foundation remains the same. If you think the foundation is right, then it will not change. You have to dig deep and throw the old foundation completely out of your being. And then there will be no pattern, no repetition.
Love is a gift: if it happens, feel grateful; if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. Nothing can be done about it.
Osho
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