Be Sad To Be Happy: (Relationship Goals?)

I shudder when I hear the famous line from the movie Jerry Maguire, "you complete me." I understand the concept of finding your "other half" is supposed to be romantic. However that expectation is a recipe for relationship disaster. If your partner completes you, then who are you when they are not around? Who were you before you met them? And even worse, who will you be if you are not together in the future? A half-person?

Despite this fantasy which we have been taught, the potential for a lasting, loving, healthy relationship can only exist when two whole people come together, and ADD to each other, instead of “complete” each other. One is love based, the other is fear based.

Below is an insightful excerpt posted by OSHOtimes from the book Be Realistic: Plan For A Miracle, written by Indian mystic and spiritual teacher Osho. He explains this concept and goes on to address the importance of sitting with our emotions, a skill which is lacking in our world of distractions. I tell my clients what we resist persists, and the inability to acknowledge and feel our emotions only perpetuates them and allows them to subconsciously control our thoughts and behavior.

Email me at alyssa@alyssarand.com with your thoughts, or if you'd like help with attracting a partner who adds to your life and learning to sit with your emotions.

"Sadness can become a very, very enriching experience. You have to work on it. It is easy to escape from your sadness -- and all relationships ordinarily are escapes; one simply goes on avoiding it. And it is always there underneath... the current continues. Even in a relationship it erupts many times. Then one tends to throw the responsibility on the other, but it is not the real thing. It is your loneliness, your own sadness. You have not settled with it yet, so it will erupt again and again.

You can escape in work. You can escape in some occupation, in relationships and society, this and that, in travelling, but it is not going to go that way, because it is part of your being.

How can a person who cannot be happy alone, be happy in relationship?

Every man is born alone -- in the world, but alone; comes through the parents, but alone. And every man dies alone, again moves out of the world alone. And between these two lonelinesses we go on deceiving and befooling ourselves. It is good to take courage and enter into this loneliness. Howsoever hard and difficult it may look in the beginning, it pays off tremendously. Once you settle with it, once you start enjoying it, once you feel it not as sadness but as silence, once you understand that there is no way to escape, you relax.

Nothing can be done about it, so why not enjoy it? Why not go into it deeply and have a taste of it, see what it is? Why be unnecessarily afraid? If it is going to be there and it is a fact -- existential, not accidental -- then why not come to terms with it? Why not move into it and see what it is?

We are just standing on the periphery, and we go on trying to avoid it. From the very beginning we are prejudiced against it.

It comes by social circumstances. A child is born... he is continuously helpless. The whole childhood is a long helplessness. He has to depend for each and every thing, small things, on others -- the mother for food, for clothing, for a bath. If he is feeling cold then he has to cry... somebody has to bring a blanket. He cannot do anything -- so he learns that his happiness depends on others.

Whenever you depend on somebody, you can never forgive that man. He makes you dependent, he makes you feel helpless.

And it is natural to feel that way too, because whenever he is alone he is unhappy. If he has made his clothes wet, then he is lying there in wet clothes and he cannot do anything. If a small pebble is next to his skin, he cannot even remove it. And for a small child, a small pebble feels like a hillock. His body and his skin are so delicate, so he suffers. He cannot do anything, he cannot even move, so he learns that his happiness depends on others. When they are there he is happy. When he feels he is alone he becomes panicky. And that is natural -- a child is helpless. The childhood goes but the conditioning remains. One day or other, one has to drop that conditioning. Now you are a grown-up; now you are no more a child. You can be on your own... now you can be happy alone. Just the conditioning has to be dropped. And this is the beauty of it -- once you start being happy and alone, you become capable of a relationship. Before that you are not capable of a relationship, because how can a person who cannot be happy alone, be happy in relationship? In the first place, happiness does not exist in him.

So I am not against relationships -- I am all for them, but before you can relate, you have to be. And if you are miserable and you relate with someone, you are going to create more misery. The misery is bound to be multiplied; not only doubled but multiplied. He is miserable, you are also miserable. He cannot be alone, you cannot be alone, so you depend on each other. And whenever you depend on somebody, you can never forgive that man. He makes you dependent, he makes you feel helpless. He becomes powerful and dominates you.

If you are unhappy, you will always make a relationship with an unhappy person... A miserable person tends to find a miserable partner.

So deep down, every lover is against, hates, the person he loves -- because nobody can love slavery. You can love only freedom. But freedom is possible only when you are free to be happy, and when you can be happy absolutely alone. If there is nobody, then too you can enjoy, dance, sing. That becomes your very quality of being. Then you can relate... then your happiness relates. Your music relates... your singing and dancing relates. Of course you multiply your happiness. Whatsoever you have will be multiplied in relationship. If you have misery, misery will be multiplied. If you have happiness, happiness will be multiplied.

In a relationship you will be reflected in millions of ways -- but you will be reflected.

And one more thing -- if you are unhappy, you will always make a relationship with an unhappy person. We tend to choose somebody with whom we feel a similarity of wave-length. A miserable person tends to find a miserable partner. And a miserable person can be chosen only by a miserable person. Even if you choose a person who is happy, he will not choose you unless you are happy. Why should he get into trouble? Who wants to get into hell?

So this is my suggestion, that before you start choosing a person, moving into a relationship, try to learn to be happy alone, otherwise you will choose a wrong person. And between two wrong persons a relationship is impossible. That is what is happening all over the world. People relate in search of happiness and just the opposite happens: more misery, more tears, more agony, more anguish.

Whenever you feel sad, sit silently and allow sadness to come; don't try to escape from it. Make yourself as sad as you can. Don't avoid it...

So be here... start meditating. Whenever you feel sad, sit silently and allow sadness to come; don't try to escape from it. Make yourself as sad as you can. Don't avoid it -- that's the one thing to remember. Cry, weep... have the whole taste of it. Cry to death... fall down on the earth... roll -- and let it go by itself. Don't force it to go; it will go, because nobody can remain in a permanent mood.

When it goes you will be unburdened, absolutely unburdened, as if the whole gravitation has disappeared and you can fly, weightless. That is the moment to enter yourself. First bring sadness. The ordinary tendency is not to allow it, to find some ways and means so that you can look somewhere else -- to go to the restaurant, to the swimming pool, meet friends, read a book or go to a movie, play on the guitar -- but do something, so that you can be engaged and you can put your attention somewhere else.

This is to be remembered -- when you are feeling sad, don't lose the opportunity. Close the doors, sit down, and feel as sad as you can, as if the whole world is just a hell. Go deep into it... sink into it. Allow every sad thought to penetrate you, every sad emotion to stir you. And cry and weep and say things -- say them loudly, there is nothing to worry about...

So first live sadness for a few days, and the second thing to remember is, the moment that momentum of sadness goes, you will feel very calm, peaceful -- as one feels after a storm. In that moment sit silently and enjoy the silence that is coming on its own. You have not brought it; you were bringing sadness. When sadness goes, in the wake, silence settles.

Listen to that silence. Close your eyes. Feel it... feel the very texture of it... the fragrance. And if you feel happy, sing, dance."

Excerpted from Be Realistic: Plan For A Miracle by Osho