Worth is not significant.

Whether you are worthy or not is not a question for love.

As you are, you can become a love object, but from your childhood you have been wrongly conditioned.

Every child is wrongly conditioned because parents go on using this need of the child – the need to be loved, the need to be hugged, the need to be cuddled.

They use it as a technique to educate him. They exploit this need. They are in trouble as to what else they can do and how to educate the child, so they make a bargain with him.

They say, ’If you do things we like you to do, then we will love you. You have to deserve it. If you are good in the school, if you are good in the house, if you are good with the neighbours, with the guests, with your mother, with your father, then you will receive love.

If you are not good, if you are not worthy, then you will starve. We will not love you; we will withdraw ourselves.’

And the need of the child is so much. It is just like food. He cannot survive without food, and he cannot survive without love.

In fact the need for love is even deeper than food, because without food, only his body will wither away; without love, his very soul.

So the child has to compromise.

He cannot say, ’Just love me as I am.’ He cannot demand that – and even if he
demands, nobody is going to supply it.

So by and by he has to force himself to do things which he never wanted to do, which he does not like to do.

But there is a bait – that he can get love; mother’s love, father’s love, brother’s love.

They will approve of him, they will make him worthy. So he works hard in the school, he tries to be dutiful. He tries to fetch a little more love from you, and then he learns something which is very dangerous.

He learns that unless you are worthy, you will never be loved.

Now this is absurd.

OshO 
The Passion for the Impossible