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into something else, that is another thing, but I don't want to give you any "shoulds" -- that you must be this, that you should be this, that "unless you achieve this ideal you are unworthy of being called human." No, as you are, you are perfectly worthy. Existence accepts you, life accepts you -- and I am not against life, I am not against existence; I simply follow the way the river of life moves. If life accepts you, I accept you.
People have conditions when they accept....
I have heard about two lovers sitting on the sea beach on a fullmoon night, and they were discussing marriage.
The woman asked, "Will you always love me -- always?"
The man said, "I have told you a thousand and one times that I will love you always, always -- but because of your question, a question has arisen in my mind. In your old age, will you look like your mother? Then I cannot love you. If you are determined to become like your mother, then forget all about marriage."
In old age, far away in the future... nobody can predict how that woman will look -- like the mother or like the father, or like the chauffeur -- nobody knows! But even that far away there is a condition, and that future condition can disturb even the present. In the present, people are continually looking at you with all kinds of prejudices, judgments: how you should be, how you should behave, your etiquette, your manners, your morality.
Small things are enough to create barriers, and we are all living with our defenses so that others cannot know exactly what we are. We allow them to know only that part of our being which is acceptable to them. This is one of the foundations of our misery. People are different, and we should enjoy and rejoice in their differences, in their variety. Your judgment is not going to change anybody; perhaps your judgment may create a stubbornness in the other person not to change. Who are you to change the person?
These are the secrets of life. If you accept somebody with totality, he starts changing, because you give him total freedom to be himself. And a person who gives you total freedom to be yourself -- you would like that person to be
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