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If you know your own worth, you need not be worried what others think about you, whether they accept you or reject you. If you are worried about others’ rejection and acceptance, that simply shows one thing – that you don’t know your own worth, that you don’t know your own being, that you don’t know God resides in you, that you are an abode of the divine.
Hence you are worried what people are thinking about you – because on their thinking, on their opinion, will depend much. Your ego depends on others’ opinions: your being depends on nobody. That’s why the man of being is always a rebel, and the man who lives in the ego has to compromise very much with the society. The egoist has to compromise, because if he does not compromise, nobody is going to fulfill his ego. The ego needs others’ support, it needs props from others: the more people like you, the better and more polished and refined an ego you can have.
That’s why people read books like Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, or Napoleon Hill, and others. There are thousands of these so- called philosophers who go on teaching people how to polish the ego in a better way, how to decorate it.
The modern mind is very much concerned about it, how you look to others. Why? Because we have lost all sense of our own being. Now all that we have is the ego, and the ego needs others’ support. If you don’t fulfill their expectations about you, they will withdraw their support. and the more you fulfill their expectations, the more of a slave you become. Whatsoever they want you to do, you do. You are just obedient, constantly compromising. Whether you like it or not does not matter to you; the whole question is whether others like it. If they want you to smile, you smile. The smile may be phony, but that is not the point – because people like it. And when they like your smile, they will love you. And when they love you, they will give attention to you, they will respect you. They will fulfill your need to be needed.
This is the whole process that we call our life. And if this life remains a constant frustration, it is not a wonder.
-Osho, "Unio Mystica, Vol 2, #3“
