Horse power, cracked mirror and the happiness of a mortal CEO.

Hypothetically speaking, as babies, we start with less than one horsepower. As we grow, we gain the strength of ten or more in the prime of our lives. As we age, we start to lose strength, one horsepower at a time, coming full circle to less than even one horsepower. To play the game of life successfully, one must understand their personal horsepower. If you have ten horses, you can do anything at peak performance, but as you lose horses, if you don’t adjust accordingly, aging can be tough to deal with.

The simple truth is that you can’t play at a ten-horse level with fewer horses. If you have five, you must adapt to that level or pay the price, as a mortal life should be driven by the wisdom of balance. Being humble at the peak of life and appreciative of your abilities in low times is not easy, but the wisdom of balance is available to everyone, allowing for happiness even during times of loss. This is a choice we all must make.

From an individual to a collective level, we need to look at life as mortals because that is what we all are, and no one can or should deny that. The stories of religions, past heroes, and opposing entities say so. From Moses, Jesus, and Prophet Muhammad to Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, and Hitler, and even the Roman Empire and the British Empire, they all had their time. The rise and fall of good and bad entities, becoming part of history, is a clear example of mortality.

History shows that we forget even the best humanity has to offer. So why do we do so much for our belonging groups? The reason behind all individual actions is the out-of-control and imbalanced sense of belonging, which denies the individual’s personal identity. This phenomenon needs more understanding. We need to look at individual life as a personal project connected to a larger picture while remaining humble so our actions don’t harm others in our lifetime or after we pass, for the sake of future generations. Even today, we kill each other over differences sown thousands of years ago.

As individuals, we are transitory entities with far-reaching impacts on others, yet we lose importance as time goes on. History shows the impacts, yet people are too busy with their survival to notice, because of the hard life.

We can’t have total control and security because of our mortality. Whether God is in the front or back seat of your life’s car, God is needed. We need help regardless of the number of horses we have, especially when we have less horsepower, like a baby needing its mother or a dying elder needing family, friends, or compassionate strangers with higher horsepower.

We naturally help each other because someone instilled that ability in all of us. This decency is a spiritual asset, potentially in all of us, regardless of our belief system. Whether you believe in God or not, you must realize that knowledge is incomplete. Sooner or later, you will find yourself needing more knowledge. If you have room to learn more, you can’t be overly passionate or sure about your existing knowledge, even if it comes from holy books. It’s important to evolve according to the present demands of time; otherwise, it’s ignorance. Ignorance is ego-related, and ego is one of the children of an uncontrollable sense of belonging, which has nothing to do with spirituality, God, or humanity—it is strictly related to group politics.

You can respect your ancestral knowledge, but you are the CEO of your personal life with free will, which places significant responsibilities on your shoulders. Watch out, because you have the potential to commit spiritual crimes against humanity in the name of your race, gender, nation, religion, or even your perception of God. If you want proof, just look around in history and even today while history is being made.

You don’t want to be on the wrong side of spirituality and humanity. Always choose compassion over passion, and spirituality and humanity over racism, nationalism, and religious extremism.

If you don’t believe in God and harbor anger against God or people, come out and say so. But denying something you don’t know or understand is egotistic. You may have more horsepower now, but you will lose it as you age, just like everyone else, and eventually, you will need help—unless you end your life, which would be unwise because it shows a lack of hope. Hope and God go hand in hand; if you have hope, you know God, whether you like it or not.

If you look at human conditions worldwide and even around you, wherever you are, you will see people at different levels of health, finance, and happiness. Interestingly, you don’t have to be rich to be happy, or in better health to be richer and more content than others. There is always someone worse off or better off than you out there. Why would God put people in misery?

The answer is difficult, but it’s all in the attitude and perception of the individual. Understanding human attitude in difficult times has been, is, and will be a quest for psychologists and religious scholars. But one thing is clear: we are all different. If you find yourself unhappy, just look at the blessings you have and ask yourself why, again and again, until you reach a conclusion.

If you feel that your life needs to be perfect and you lose happiness and contentment over it, you have placed yourself in a never-ending, unwinnable situation. You should look at it not as a disease but as a condition that has the potential to rob your own happiness and contentment out of your temporary life. Not a good place to be as a mortal. If you see yourself in this shattered glass mirror with a hard-to-understand picture created for you, and especially if you spend your whole life in this mode, you need to understand the meaning of mortality and your belief system about God. In this condition, you not only set yourself up but also set up God for failure. When that happens, you look at God without personal responsibility for reciprocation. You may expect God to do everything for you but won’t even reciprocate for the blessings of the oxygen you breathe to experience this mortal life.

If you can’t be happy during the tests of this life, how can or would you be happy in the afterlife? Unless you learn through life experiences and change, you can’t be happy, even in your perceived heaven.

It never is about what you have or don’t have; it’s always about your attitude towards what you have or don’t have. Human happiness is highly dependent on the individual’s attitude, knowledge of self, and the kind of happiness they seek. Understanding oneself helps to describe the causes or reasons for the right or wrong attitude, and that knowledge helps to discover the differences between core and surface happiness.

If you feel poor, you don’t have the power, whether it’s physical, material, or spiritual. Your happiness will become dependent on the stuff you are lacking. For instance, being physically poor will make you feel sad only when you compare yourself to others who can do and achieve more than you can. Sure, it can make one sad, but it also has the potential to inspire one to start working out, take physical activity classes, or start working on oneself to excel in whatever you can be good at. It’s a matter of attitude: you either start to improve yourself or feel sorry, blame God for your limitations, and get worse by staying in a sad situation. These limiting feelings can rob one’s happiness unless one takes responsibility to adjust their attitude and take charge to become a CEO.

The Ladder of Horizon

Picture yourself climbing a ladder with many people doing the same thing. Being competitive, we all want to be on top and ahead of everyone else. You struggle to climb one step at a time, hoping to get higher than everyone else. When you reach a point where you can’t climb any more regardless of your struggle and strategies, and nothing works, you feel frustrated, unhappy, and angry because you have lost control. If you continue to be unhappy and frustrated, you can drive yourself to illness related to unhappiness. It’s time to look down to see how high you have climbed. Sure, there are thousands of people above you, but there are millions or even billions who want to be at the level you already are, and yet you are still unhappy. The kicker is that you can spend your whole life trying to climb the ladder of horizon but run out of time. All along, while you are too busy climbing, your life is passing you by, and then you fall regardless of the height you have climbed because of mortality. You can enjoy the climb with enthusiasm and appreciation or spend your life in frustration while it passes—it’s all in the attitude. If you have knowledge of other people’s comfort, happiness, and financial success, only then do you start to feel good, bad, inadequate, sad, or weak.

The saying “we all are in the same boat” is not correct because each and every one of us is, and potentially can be, a CEO of his/her life. If everybody were in the same boat instead of on the ladder, things would be different. This ladder is a fact of life, and we need to understand it individually. There will always be levels of life you will have to climb, but remember one thing: you will personally run out of time. Watch out for trends, friends, and the sense of belonging, as they can help rob you of your own happiness and contentment right out of your mortal life. That, my friend, is your only valuable treasure—you can’t afford to sacrifice it.

Collectively, we have experimented with communism and failed miserably because it goes against the nature of a CEO. It is deeply related to the flawed and political sense of belonging, which is extreme without the balancing sense of freedom. I am a believer in personal freedom, but I also understand the needs and power of belonging. It’s not one or the other; it is the individual creating balance with the triangle from the top down: the individual, the sense of belonging, and the sense of freedom.

Since we all have been blessed with different abilities and potentials, it is human nature to either strive to reach personal potential or to be content with whatever we have. In either case, both religions and communism attempt to rob you of your personal potential so that power can remain in the hands of governing elites.

You can spend all your life energy losing weight, making money, or climbing higher to reach a certain bracket, while life passes you by. How many people are above or below you is not the main thing. You are the CEO of your life, responsible for all departments. Therefore, never compare yourself to just one side. Compare yourself to both sides for inspiration from those above you and for humility and appreciation of your blessings from those below you.

As I said, when we compare, we need to compare both sides so we can carry on and be happy at the same time. There is always someone worse off, and even the richest person can lose health and wealth at any moment. Champions lose to up-and-comers. There is no guarantee for the richest or the strongest to have it all. You can be rich without health, or you can be strong without wealth. The responsibility is on your shoulders to look after all departments of life.

Comparing both sides is crucial because people on a higher level should incentivize you to work hard and never give up, while those below you should give you satisfaction, appreciation, happiness, and contentment about your present status.

Material happiness is connected with a strong sense of belonging because we all want to fit in, be admired, or impress others to gain respect and feel good about ourselves. Putting others on a pedestal and yourself down as a doormat all the time is a sign of low self-esteem, personal weakness, and disrespect—these are flaws unless intentional for spiritual reasons. Why is others’ approval so important to you that you work so hard you acquire stress-related health problems and sacrifice core happiness for surface happiness?

Core happiness is a powerful phenomenon; it can even confuse highly educated individuals. Spiritual happiness is core happiness because serving others touches us all at our core, providing happiness and contentment.

Genetically, we are driven to work together. Our identity depends on others’ approval, yet God created each of us as a completely independent and competent CEO. The happiness department is not so confusing when you understand the responsibilities of a CEO.

Working for humanity can bring you core happiness, just like a mother looking after her baby willingly sacrifices her sleep and everything else to gain powerful feelings of nature. Ingrained powerful nature has every creature dancing for the feelings of core happiness. We are all compelled to do our job regardless of education level. Seeking happiness is wise, but it is wiser to understand it like a CEO who knows the difference between surface and core happiness.

Regardless of intelligence level, everybody is trying to achieve happiness because deep inside, we all know about mortality. Personally, I think accumulating happiness should be the top priority of a mortal life because no other treasure can match fulfillment. The confusion between types of happiness is not easy to sort out.

What is an illusion and what is real for the individual? Especially when the sense of belonging clashes with the sense of freedom, it can cause confusion about what is right and wrong even for the highly educated. That is why it’s crucial to become the CEO of your life, so you can sort everything out and do justice to all departments of life, including recognizing the power you hold as an individual. Know that you can balance people, yourself, and even God. Know that nothing works without others. God’s light cannot be lit without people, and without the individual, there are no people. (The triangle of human, God, and people.)

The power of nature is so strong that we follow it helplessly. Just like all other creatures, we follow these orders as well. For instance, reproduction continues despite all self-control, laws of the land like China’s, or the fear-based tactics of religions. Wedlock or not, kids keep coming.

Naturally, we have opposing senses. The sense of freedom is just as powerful as the sense of belonging. Wars have been, are, and will be fought for both senses.

The sense of belonging can overpower anything an individual thinks or feels. The recent dispute about standing, kneeling, or sitting during the national anthem is a classic case of being torn between belonging to a nation, race, religion, or humanity as an individual.

Your mirror has been presented to you as shattered by group politics, so you must become a CEO to see your real self. If you keep looking in the cracked mirror, you will never see how you really look. The sense of belonging is exclusively and above all for humanity as a whole, especially if you believe genetically you are a human being.

Remember, you are the one who has to see through the mirror, even if it’s cracked. You have to look into it with a personal belief system so you can take responsibility for reciprocation. If your image is distorted, you will hoard all human resources to one percent and live a politically divided life riddled with wars and social crimes against yourself. Helping others is not a democratic or political thing; it is a spiritual thing. Paying a little tax to help others, even in far lands regardless of differences, is a spiritual duty. You can’t have Islamic, Hindu, Jewish, or Christian charities; that is one hundred percent political. If you want to give to charity, it should be spirituality-related, and spirituality has no religion, race, gender, or nation. You just have to be able to see with corrected lenses, vision, or simply fix the cracks in the mirror so you can see the human being.

We have come up with self-denial and several religions for civilization. We have learned about boundaries, manners, etiquette, ethics, and social rules. All the knowledge to prevent pregnancies and the weapons for abortions, even the threat of AIDS and death, could not stop humans from following nature.

We create rules against anything just for people to break them. Since the dawn of civilization, we have been struggling for control as a society and as individuals. If we were to be successful, by now we should have been. Society should be crime-free, and individuals should be superhuman, with total control of their actions.

Population would be in control, and for sure, there would not be any wars. Just by looking at history, you can see that regardless of wars, the population has always been out of control. Like the spider, humans are reckless enough to keep reproducing. Whether it’s AIDS or God, the drive behind our nature is so powerful that you can’t stop it by fear of self-destruction or death.

The connection with nature is not as clear as we think it is. We need to learn more about ourselves to understand the power and wisdom of the animal inside every human.

If you have inner peace instead of struggle, you will be able to see how you act like a puppet. Whether it’s rules of society or competing nature, at the end of the day, you are the one responsible for your actions and inner peace.

Becoming a responsible CEO can and should help you understand the contradictions of the cracked mirror and find solutions for this temporary life and whatever is beyond. Sure, you can have a society with a lower crime rate by imposing strict punishments, but you always run the risk of human rebellion due to oppression. The truly disciplined human being is the CEO who creates balance between the inner man and the beast to achieve inner peace. With inner peace, one can understand and respect nature yet have a say in everyday life to achieve happiness, health, and success as a mortal being.