Each one of us is carrying a burden, just emerging from it or racing towards another. We all race differently.
There are slow runners, those who run faster, and those unsure of what is happening. It doesn’t mean you are left behind when all options are exhausted.
The destination is the same; you are racing against no one. Free yourself from that fear. Don’t compare. It is too expensive. In a social media world where everyone is living a successful and happy life; it is very easy to lose your mind.
Everyone is secretly struggling with something. They just showcase their polished versions for you to feel bad about yourself, your family and your country. Don’t get mad.
The world is too big to feel bad about anything or to feel like every stop on the way is the end of the race. Find happiness where you are because there is no peace in the destination. It is in the chase.
You find nothing on top of the mountain. Enjoy the climbing process. Forget about the big things. Embrace the small things. Life will never give you everything at once.
There is no joy for a man who is overly expectant. Expect good and most times, expect the worst of things. No wonder, we all have our plans and how we want our lives to be but it doesn’t work that way. When things are bad now, find every little good thing at the moment because tomorrow never comes.
This brings me to the story of one man, Adolf Merckle. In 2009, this man decided that life was not worth living and took it like he was joking: by standing in front of a speeding train.
He was a German billionaire who was among the 100 richest people in the world with a staggering net worth of $9.2 billion. Before his demise, his business was said to have employed over 100,000 people, making some of his manager’s multi-millionaires before their 40th birthday.
In 2008, Merckle made bets that ended in losses amounting to $500 million. Despite years of proven success, the former billionaire decided that he wasn’t mentally strong enough to watch the slow collapse of his empire.
He was known as a man who always called his family every Sunday to discuss every step taken and challenges that have been faced as well but one Monday, he called his family for something different, to tell them that he was going to commit suicide and if there was anything he wanted from his family, it was love.
Unfortunately, Merckle never felt loved before he didn’t live to experience it. It doesn’t matter if you are loved when you are gone or not because it won’t change the fact that you are gone. Forever.
And If you don’t know yet, the world never stops and people, including your family, will be sad for days or months but they will be happy again, much happier without you. Show love when there is life; everything after will feel fake.
Merckle has built his company from scratch, so he understood the value of every single dollar and how expensive it is to be poor. Apparently, for someone, who has known real poverty for half of his life, every single dollar lost was like a thousand dollars.
But when for millions, that meant a disaster, in fact, a real catastrophe. But Merckle was still a billionaire, even 1 million dollars, if invested well can generate generational wealth, let alone 8 billion.
There is no doubt; Adolf’s life was still perfectly okay despite having lost millions. I don’t want to judge him because each and every person can experience anything similar to his situation. But let’s come to reality, the human condition. There are about 7.5 billion human beings on this planet, each with a dream, worries and a reason they wake up in the morning.
Each of these people feels life starts and ends with them. They work hard. Some fail and others succeed, and more exceedingly to a point where they feel bad about it. Human condition comes to one thing, to be happier or more successful than the person next door.
For Merckle, all that he had wanted was to make a lot of money. Buy villas and be the most successful person he has ever been in his life because he believed doing so would make him the happiest person in the world. But he was blind to the fact that more success would take away his own joy and worse his own life.
Merckle, like other billionaires, found that life was better when he had less. His losses made him feel unlucky, but he forgot the millions struggling in poverty worldwide. This highlights a universal truth: no future success can bring you happiness if you can’t cherish today’s small joys. Peace.