When I was in school, we had a lesson in English, where the author shared the story of a cousin who was utterly useless, but managed to have a better life than others. Being hailed as a good-for-nothing by family members, it turned out that women always wanted this useless man, giving him access to a lifestyle he hadn’t earned. Eventually, he married a rich old woman, who left him an insanely big inheritance. I think including a yacht.

I don’t know why this story stuck with me. Maybe because everything else we heard those days  told us that hard work was the key to success and that life was fair, punishing bad people and rewarding good ones. This story told a different tale. Life was unfair. Unpredictable. It was a hard lesson to forget.

Osho Agrees…

The lesson that people could fall for useless people repeated itself in front of my eyes in real life every once in a while, and I’d remember the story every time, silently shaking my head.

And now, as I read ‘Intimacy’ by Osho, I found something that left my head reeling. ‘Be useless’, he says. (Click here to read an excerpt) The more useful you are, the less love you will have and the more you will be used. How on earth could that possibly make sense?

But when I dwell upon it, it starts to make sense. I’ve said many times before, that love and need are mutually exclusive. And a useful person is needed by many. He is so useful that he attracts people that have use for him. He will eventually get manipulated, used, abused. A useless person, on the other hand, can only mingle with people who have no use for him at all. Indeed. the only reason they would want to be with such a person is because they love him.

And then of course, there are the deeper aspects. Those who become useful, expect returns for their efforts, either materially, physically or emotionally. They help because they want to feel important in other people’s lives. And the compulsion to make this person feel important can be very tiring, very stifling for those receiving the favors. Even more reasons for a lack of love. This relationship is a burden, not a gift. Deep inside the subconscious, this person knows that people are with him because he is useful. It leads to a very unsettling feeling of a constant lack of love.

A useless person on the other hand, expects nothing. There is space and openness for the other person to feel whatever they are feeling.

How Useless is Useless?

So does this mean that we must all drop whatever we are doing, quit our jobs, and sit in wait for someone to put morsels in our mouths? No. We do need to drop our desire to be useful to other people so that they can value us in some way. Stop doing anything because others want you to, need you to. Do it because YOU want to.

We might sometimes be useful in love – but those are actions stemming from a deep love, not from an expectation of gratitude or anything more. These actions don’t commoditize us, but they just might add an extra spring in our step.

Ultimately…

So if you merely want to reinforce your ego and your false sense of security by being surrounded by people you can control because you have something to offer, then by all means, be useful. But, if you want to eliminate egoic, need-based relationships from your life, if you really want to be surrounded by people who just love you, be useless.