I checked forward 25 years and got confirmation to not change a damn thing.

The 80 year old version of us deserves the microphone.

GrandpaGratiDude, May 13, 2049. Ben Lomond, California, apparently with some kids that aren’t born yet, and they are listening to stories that teach about the eternal truths of love and unity.



Our Old GrandpaDudes and GrannyDudettes would tell us to look forward about 100 years and think about the fact that the house that we live in, that we fought so hard to purchase into accumulate equity in, now owned by complete strangers and they’ve gutted everything and you wouldn’t even recognize the place.

Your children are buried next to you in the cemetery and have been a dozen years or so.



A few people remember your children, and a much smaller number of people still remember you.



That’s OK… this is just the way life works in the cycle of life and death. Now you know that living as if you’re achievements and pursuits here on this earth matter, if they only serve yourself, is not a good plan.

Your acquisitions or Ego Victories will not show up on a future scoreboard Elon Musk, pretty naïve, and really a sad form of self-deception..



Like my wise and good bro Vinny of I Got a Guy(IGG Network) tells me up in New York: “I’ve never seen a hearse, pulling a U-Haul trailer full of valuables”



That pretty much sums it up.

The reality is my messages here in this blog are about finding balance between what we need to do relative to our responsibilities and societal pressures and economic opportunities, however, we’ve got to keep an eye on what really matters and take the perspective of how an old person views their own life in retrospect.

I’m not coming from a place of academic research or social science books but from real conversations I’ve had in my life with people over the age of 70, and especially those folks that were within the last year of their life that I’ve met through my mother’s passing a few years ago at assisted living and in hospice.

I was, I was told, one of the few visitors that wasn’t scared of the semi-crazy dying people because my Mom was actually one of them I guess. I just looked at everybody else that somebody else’s dad or mom and I was just stepping into the visitation for that day when I had the opportunity to talk to them.  I kept my heart open and tried to be patient as it’s confusing and mentally draining to follow the conversations of people that are in a state of mental confusion or perhaps coping with some deeper existential challenges relative to their impending death. 

I can’t pretend to understand what that might be like. I did my best to be patient and listen.



The recurring message was that there aren’t any two right ways to live however, the key was to not ignore either big messages that you keep receiving or big signs from the universe that you choose to ignore.



That was something that I heard a bunch of times was that “I should’ve listened to that voice inside my head when it told me to quit my job or leave my marriage”, or “ I can’t believe I ignored all those obvious warning signs that my life was out of control because I saw them and instead, I tried to pretend that they didn’t mean anything. Well, those signs didn’t mean something”.

OK, I’m listening, go on…

Other areas of obvious regret were around the subject of forgiveness, both in terms of providing forgiveness to others or simply asking or seeking forgiveness to close the emotional loop with on relationships that were impactful, that never got closure.

When I was in those first few weeks of going cold turkey on quitting alcohol with my own self developed neuroscience based yoga and  zero step program(not clowning the 12 step program. It’s just that I wasn’t nearly as organized or prepared for my program and I didn’t have any steps particularly laid out ha ha), I used the thought of me as an old man and how my life might look in terms of feeling regretful if I didn’t quit drinking. 

I thought about my kids and their mother and how grateful and appreciative I was that their love and how this was the time for me to make sure that my behavior and actions always lined up with my heart my mind and my intentions going forward and not letting alcohol take over and disrupt that connection and continuity.



It is a great feeling to know that every day I’m living in a way that I’m going to be extremely proud of 10, 20, and 30 years from now, God willing. 

What this does for me is it removes any sort of latent or passive anxiety I might have around not feeling like I’m living congruent to the messages from my faith and my higher-self. 

When you remove that type of existential anxiety, your level of comfort and calm becomes creased, and the benefits to your everyday life are profound and innumerable.

Life is about being honest with yourself and taking stock of how you were doing because all we’re trying to do is simply be the best version of ourselves, we’re not in competition with anyone else and there’s absolutely no need for comparisons because they provide no value or no useful information and how we could better our own lives or the lives of those people close to us.

Sometimes it’s hard to accept the fact that we have access to the answers we need because that creates a great deal of accountability. 

Gratitude is fundamentally an act of accountability because you no longer have the concept of victimhood, instead you look at everything that you’ve experienced as either a learning opportunity or a blessing that will reveal itself over the long haul.



A Lesson
OR
A Blessin’

Boom!

That’s all you need to remember right there I could’ve saved a lot of words in time and just written that ha ha.

https://instagram.com/p/C7k9C9tOE5Z/

This is the video that inspired today’s post, please watch. Thx Peeps.

So do the things in your life that bring you joy and happiness and a lot of those things are the things that you love to do when you were eight years old.

Look at the things that you most grateful for and make your decisions every day based upon how you can improve your relationship with those people or improve yourself in key areas so that you can continue to thrive and live with joy and happiness.

This is how the sausage is made for gratitude, and this is just one of the approaches and mindset that we can help you achieve so that you can walk through life and shining with your AOG, or Attitude of Gratitude.

EVERY DAY:

Love

and

Gratitude

https://www.instagram.com/GratiDude_abides

Thanks for reading The’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

KevinACarpenter@gmail.com/941.894.8030 Text me your celly-cell so I can build my database please…..

Thank you sincerely.

The G.I.F.T. Today

Grateful: for feeling caught up, rested, and playing offense in life. Incredible feeling

Intention-elevate your manifestation efforts of how fast we can build global gratitude Grateful4 Movement, visualize international stage in 2025 and dream with urgency and grandeur

First-Onward golf car with Solar, yesssssssss

Things-flea market, the best, the “pulga” in Spanish…”vamos a la pulga bro?”

Every day, every way, grateful. 

KC

I am here to help, add somebody that needs a “check up from the neck up”

KevinACarpenter@gmail.com

Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Thanks for reading the GratiDude’s Substack!