Welcome!

Welcome to this episode, which is my testimony part 3. I hope everybody is staying clear of what they are calling the coronavirus. I actually call it the carnivorous virus. It seems to be taking people left and right, doesn't it? I sincerely hope that nobody has lost anyone they know. But I'm afraid this whole pandemic has got people scared, especially because of all the people that have already been lost.

My Grandfather

I thought long and hard about what to talk about in this episode and this is what I came up with: I'm going to talk about my grandfather. I mean my dad's father. He's not someone that I saw a whole lot of when I was growing up. but I still accredit him as being the most influential person in my life although I've had some very influential people around me, for most of my life anyway.

I was very blessed to have really good teachers even when I was not in a very good school. I have had some pretty good friends along the way. All in all you know, as a life, as a whole ball of wax, mine hasn't been too bad. Now, when my book gets released and people start reading it. I'm afraid people are going to think I just had an awful life. It's a matter of perspective really. I look at it this way: Everyone suffers hardship in life, even the ones that think they had an easy life. They've had some very difficult times throughout their life. And I don't think anybody is special in that regard.

Don't compare notes and see who's life was worse or better. Each one of us endured struggles. Tough times happen in life and nobody is immune. These things happen to us for any number of reasons and I believe that one of those reasons is so that we can help someone others who undergo something similar. I believe that some part of our struggles is intended for us to show compassion to another.

It's Hard on My Generation

I think that's why I want to talk a little bit in part three of my testimony, about the most influential man in my life who was my grandfather.

He had made a comment to me once when I was younger and he told me that he was grateful that he was not growing up in the generation that I was in and quite frankly that floored me and a lot of things my grandfather said to me it made me think and some of those are actually all of those things. I have thought about it my whole life but some of them. I still haven't figured it out completely but I'm still working on them.

One thing that he said to me was. I'm glad I'm not growing up in your generation and this floors me. So, I asked my grandfather how he could say that. I say, granddaddy, you were born at the end of WWI, you survived The Great Depression, fought in WWII, in four of the five major campaigns in Europe I might add, and of course, then there was the Vietnam conflict and then, of course, you know the stock market crashes and Lord knows what else we could come up with. You know the civil rights era. I mean I'm thinking all of the things that he has endured his lifetime.

Whatever the case may be and I could not understand for the life of me why he was saying and even at that age. I believe I remember being able to say, "my life is a lot better than that." even though you know I felt it was a pretty hard time. I knew somehow that well I felt like anyway my life was not even comparable to what he had already lived through and of course as I got older I learned that.

I compared my good life to his life of hardships. And that's one of few things that he said to me that he did not follow up with an explanation. He simply said, "you'll know what I'm talking about it soon enough and you know now that I am older, I have thought about that a lot and you know in a lo...