Osho Quote on Balance and How Both Happiness and Sadness Are Needed In Life

“Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height. Sadness gives roots. Happiness gives branches. Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed, and the higher a tree goes, the deeper it goes, simultaneously. The bigger the tree, the bigger will be its roots. In fact, it is always in proportion. That’s its balance.”

Osho

Beyond the Quote (191/365)

We don’t go through life, we grow through life. We don’t move along a timeline from birth to death in a unilateral direction. We move bilaterally through life—both upward and downward—like a tree. A tree doesn’t just grow a trunk and branches and leaves in a singular direction towards the sun. It grows roots, too—it grows downward. And without a proportional amount of roots the tree cannot stand. And neither can we.

We are constantly bombarded with the idea of reaching for the “sun”—pursuing happiness, doing what makes us happy, thinking happy thoughts, etc. But, this is unbalanced. Happiness is not the meaning of life. It is a superficial definition. It is merely the pursuit of growing “height.” It is unilateral. It does not account for depth. It is an attempt to grow the trunk, branches, and leaves, without the roots. And a tree without roots is no tree at all.

In fact, when you see people who are constantly falling over time and again, it is likely because they are not strongly enough rooted. They may continue to pick themselves up after each fall and rebalance their trunks on the ground as many times as they’d like, but until they learn to grow downward they will not stabilize any more than they did before. They will continue to get knocked down in life for as long as they are vulnerable and shallowly rooted.

What’s worse is that, in many cases, people stand themselves back up on their trunks and think only of growing thicker trunks, more branches, and extra leaves—which only makes the inevitable next fall worse! When we stand ourselves back up, we need to figure out how we can deepen our roots and solidify our foundation—not solely focus on how we can reach for the sun and become more “happy.” If we are to survive the storms of life, it is downward that we need to grow, not upward.

So, what does it mean to grow downward? As Osho mentions above, it is about understanding and being one with sadness. It is about confronting the ugly, harsh, hurtful realities of life and not ignoring or running from them. It is about reflecting on and examining our childhoods, our upbringings, our hardest moments and making sense of the events that shaped us. It is about exploring the depth of emotion that lies on the other side of happiness.

By only chasing happiness, we are in effect, running away from life. Why? Because life isn’t happiness. In fact, it is mostly the opposite! Life is ugly, harsh, hurtful and filled with storms, malevolence, selfishness, and greed. If we live our life ignoring or running from our encounters with such powerful forces, we will be shunting the growth of our roots. There is no other way to see it.

And as soon as our roots stop growing deeper, we stop to grow. Period. There is no growth towards happiness until the sadness has been confronted. There is no moving onward and upward until peace has been made with what caused us pain. There is no healing until the hurt has been given its due time. There can be no more branches or leaves until there are more roots.

So, if you find yourself feeling down and unstable in this crazy world, rather than relentlessly trying to figure out where you can stick more branches and leaves and how you might grab more sunshine, try to figure out how you can deepen your roots. Because as it is true in nature, you can only ever grow upwards in proportion to how much you grow downwards. Which means, in effect, those who have lived through and experienced the most sadness, will also be the most strongly rooted for the most happiness. So, hold on. Be patient. Set your roots. And remember that your happiness will come proportionally in the opposite direction to the sadness you might be feeling in due time. Don’t ever forget that.

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