QnA with Sri Sri

Q. What should be done about sorrow? They say, letting go and being dispassionate gives you happiness. Doesn't being dispassionate make you lame, or a pessimist?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: No, dispassion is like breathing out, and passion is like breathing in. You have to have passion, but if you have only passion, you will get into depression sooner or later, because not all your passion comes to fructification immediately, it takes its own time. At that time, dispassion gives you the much needed room for passion to exist.
Passion is like breathing in, and dispassion is like breathing out. You can’t say, 'I will only breathe in, I won’t breathe out', then you will die. It is not possible. So, dispassion is part of life. If you don’t have dispassion, if you are feverish about anything, you will lose sleep. You will not be able to sleep also. Some degree of dispassion allows you to sleep well. If you don’t have that, you will get insomnia. Passion and dispassion - this is inbuilt in our nature. Somewhere you have to let go. And that letting go is what is dispassion. And in between these two, we need compassion, got it? We need three things in life, passion, dispassion and compassion.