According to Osho, when gossip makes you feel old, ignore it and listen to your inner gospel. Take gossip as proof you have friends, laugh, and don’t identify with it. Aging is inevitable; the wise inquire into its beauty, freedom, and detachment. Stay in love and playful; youth and age are attitudes. Don’t let rumors define your being.
Rumors are just noise—laugh, keep loving, and choose to see the good and freedom in growing older.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, it is now becoming too much. The gossips are going right and left. Even I have started suspecting whether I am old or just a woman. Please say some words of comfort.
People will become almost like machines -- all alike, coming from the assembly line like Ford cars one by one. They say every minute one car comes out of the Ford factory, similar to another following it -- in one hour, sixty cars... twenty-four hours it goes on. Shifts of workers go on changing, but the assembly line goes on producing the same cars. Do you want humanity also to be streamlined, assembled in a factory exactly like everybody else, that wherever you go you meet Sophia Loren? It will be very boring. ... The way to fight a woman, Devageet, is with your head: grab it and run. ... All would like to live long, but none would like to be old. Why? -- because of the next stage. Nobody is really afraid of old age, but after old age is death and nothing else. So everybody would like…
Beloved Osho, am I really getting old, because everyone is gossiping about it?
Devageet again! Just two days ago you had become old, and I had to take so much trouble to bring you back. And you slip again! One time is okay, but twice is too much -- it is becoming really a serious problem. And don't listen to gossip; you are here to listen to the gospel! But I have also heard the gossip that is making you worried. So first the gossip: One day at the Poona drugstore, Milarepa, Sarjano and Devageet come in to buy some condoms. Milarepa goes first and says he would like a week's supply, which is six. "Why only six?" asks the druggist. "Well," says Milarepa, "these days I like to have Sunday off." Next, Sarjano walks up and asks for eight condoms. "Eight?" says the druggist, "why eight?" "Mama mia," says Sarjano, "I-a always like-a to do it twice-a on Sundays." And last Devageet…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, IN WESTERN SOCIETY, AT LEAST, YOUTH IS CONSIDERED TO BE EVERYTHING, AND TO A CERTAIN EXTENT, IT SEEMS THIS IS AS IT SHOULD BE IF WE ARE TO CONTINUE GROWING IN EVERY DIMENSION OF LIFE. BUT THE NATURAL COROLLARY OF THAT IS THAT AS ONE MOVES AWAY FROM YOUTH, BIRTHDAYS ARE NO LONGER A CAUSE FOR CONGRATULATIONS, BUT ARE AN EMBARRASSING AND UNAVOIDABLE FACT OF LIFE. IT BECOMES IMPOLITE TO ASK SOMEONE THEIR AGE; GRAY HAIR IS DYED, TEETH CAPPED OR REPLACED ENTIRELY, DEMORALIZED BREASTS AND FACES HAVE TO BE LIFTED, TUMMIES MADE TAUT, AND VARICOSE VEINS SUPPORTED -- BUT UNDER COVER. YOU CERTAINLY DON'T TAKE IT AS A COMPLIMENT IF SOMEONE TELLS YOU THAT YOU LOOK YOUR AGE.
Beloved Osho, I am also getting old. Would you tell me a few laws for middle age also?
In India, the idea of evolution has never existed, but on the contrary just the opposite idea. The word is not even used in the West -- you may not have even heard of the word -- but in India they have been thinking about involution, not evolution: "We are shrinking, we are falling down." In the second stage of the fall one leg is lost; the table becomes a tripod. It is still balanced, but not as much as it was with four legs. In the third stage it loses another leg; now it is standing only on two legs, absolutely unbalanced. And this is the fourth stage: even two legs are not available; you are standing on one leg -- how long you can stand? The first stage is called satyuga, the age of truth; the second is simply named by the number; treta is the third, because…
Beloved Osho, since becoming old two days ago, I have discovered a whole new world, the world of women's gossip. I am now accepted as one of the girls -- well almost, but I guess I will never know that. My question is: is there no end to gratitude?
Devageet, I have told you that the woman has three ages. She never becomes old; it is only the man who becomes old. The woman passes through childhood, through youth and, "How wonderful you are looking." I think somebody has told you, "How wonderful you are looking." That has given you the wrong conception of "Since becoming old two days ago..." All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher. From today you will be known as a philosopher.... Remember: Old age is when the candles cost more than the cake. And also remember: Old age is when getting it up gets you down. You have certainly entered into the age when people will call to you, "How wonderful you are looking." The eyes of the dead are closed gently; we also have to open gently the eyes of the living. I will try my…