The ordinary mind always throws the responsibility on somebody else. It is always the other who is making you suffer. Your wife is making you suffer, your husband is making you suffer, your children are making you suffer, or the financial system of the society, capitalism. communism, fascism,...the social structure, or fate, Karma, God ...you name it.

People have millions of ways to avoid responsibility. But the moment you say something else -X,Y,Z - is making you suffer, then you cannot do anything to change it... Excuses and excuses and excuses -excuses just to avoid the single insight that "I am responsible for myself...Whatsoever I am, I am my own creation."... Once this insight settles: "I am responsible for my life - for all my suffering, for my pain, for all that has happened to me and is happening to me - I have chosen it this way; these are the seeds and now I am reaping the crop..." then everything else is simple... - because once I know that I am responsible, I also know that I can drop it at any moment I decide to. Nobody can prevent me from doing it.

Of course you have a very limited situation, but even in a limited situation you can sing a song. You can either cry tears of helplessness or you can sing a song. Even with chains on your feet you can dance; then even the sound of the chains will have a melody to it.

From The Book of Wisdom : Discourses on Atisha`s Seven Points of Mind Training, by Osho
Used by kind permission of Osho Foundation International