The bigger the expectation, the bigger is going to be the frustration.
It is within your hands to be frustrated in life or not. Just your expectations should become smaller, smaller, smaller, and in the same proportion the frustration will become smaller. A day will come when there will be no expectation; then you will never come across any frustration.
You think, you imagine, some moments of pleasure - and they don't materialize, because existence has no obligation to materialize your imaginations. It has never given you any promise that whatever you think is going to happen. You have taken it for granted without any enquiry, as if the whole existence owes you something.
You owe everything to existence.
Existence owes you nothing.
So if you are running to catch shadows, you cannot catch them - it is not in the nature of things.
Then there is pain, because you were so much absorbed in running after the shadows that you were feeling a kind of fulfillment. A goal was there; although not in your hands but far away, still it was there. And it was only a question of time, a little more effort. Be a little more American: try and try and try again - and sooner or later existence is going to yield.
Existence does not care who you are, American or Russian. It never yields to anybody - it simply goes in its own way. By making an effort to fulfill your desires, to force nature, existence, to come behind you, you are creating causes of pain, suffering.
The moment you understand, you drop these causes.
And the dropping of the causes is the disappearance of all your misery.
It was your projection.
-Rajneesh
