That idea is dangerous. If you want to do something important you will never be able to do it; that’s the danger of it. People who enjoy doing small things do important things because they have the relaxed attitude needed to do the important. Once the idea gets into your head that you have to do something special, something important, momentous, then you lose all peace; all calm is lost, and you become so strained. How can the important thing happen through it? The important happens only when you are playful. But if you want it to happen you are serious, that’s the paradox.
All that has happened in the world, which is important in any way, has always happened through playfulness, all great inventions are out of playfulness. Be playful! Forget about the important, because behind the important the ego is hiding. Why bother about the important? Once we are gone, everybody forgets about us. Within five hundred years nobody will remember you, so why bother?
Just think of people who lived 500 years before us: they were doing great, important things and making much fuss about it, much ado about nothing. Where are they? Everybody will go down the drain, so why bother? Why waste time? Doing important things means that when you are gone people will remember you. But people are not bothering about you; you are not bothering about anybody else. In fact, children hate history. Who wants to read history and who wants to remember those stupid names? Those people were doing great things and all that they have done is made history, which poor children have to remember. That’s all that they have done so why bother?
Comments