Osho: Being Happy Is Ordinary, Being Miserable Is Extra Ordinary

When the shoe does fit

Life is fulfilling, but you are not in contact with life. Old contact is lost, new has not been made. You are in a transmission, hence you are so dull, hence life looks so mediocre, sad, boring -- even futile. Says Jean-Paul Sartre: Man is a useless passion -- futile, impotent passion, unnecessarily making much fuss about life, and there is nothing in it. . . meaningless is life. The more you become enclosed in yourself, the more life becomes meaningless. Then you are miserable. Then misery has some other payoffs.

When you are happy you are ordinary, because to be happy is just to be natural. To be miserable is to become extraordinary. Nothing is special in being happy -- trees are happy; so are birds, animals and children. What is special -- it's the usual thing in existence. Existence is made of the stuff called happiness. Just look! Can't you see these trees, so happy? Birds are singing. Happiness is a very ordinary thing. To be blissful is to be absolutely ordinary. The self, the ego, does not allow that.

That's why people talk so much about their miseries; they become special by doing so. People go on talking about their illness, their headache, their stomach, their this and that. All people are in some way or other hypochondriacs. And if somebody does not believe in your misery, you feel hurt. If somebody sympathises with you and believes in your misery -- even your exaggerated version of it -- you feel very happy. This is something stupid, but has to be understood. A miserable man can have a more concentrated ego than a happy man.

A happy man really cannot have ego, because a person becomes happy only when there is no ego. The more egoless you are, the more happy; the more happy, the more egoless. You dissolve into happiness. You cannot exist together with happiness; you exist only when there is misery. In happiness there is dissolution. Have you ever seen any happy moment; watched it? In happiness, you are not. When you are in love, you are not. If love has ever made its abode in your heart, even for a few moments, you are not.

When you see the beautiful sun rising, a silent lake,or a flower, suddenly, you are not. When there is beauty, when there is love, you are not. Hearing someone, if you feel there is truth, you simply disappear in that moment. You are not, truth is. Whenever there is something of the beyond, you are not; you have to make space for it. You are only when there is misery, when there is a lie, when there is something wrong. You are only when the shoe does not fit. When the shoe fits perfectly, you are not.

Then you forget the feet, you forget the shoe. When there is no headache there is no head. If you want to feel your head, you will need a headache; that is the only way. To be is to be miserable. To be happy is not to be. When a person learns to read, difficulties arise; now the self is rising. In villages, people are happy. They are closer to trees and nature than in London or New York. Trees have disappeared; there are only asphalt roads, concrete buildings, all man-made. The farther away you go from nature, the farther you are from happiness.