Time for some year-end inspiration before we begin another year with the dark and the weird,

Meetsacks. Today, as we prepare to say goodbye to 2025 and say hello to 26, I'd like to share the

story of Christopher Paul Gardner, a man born in 1954 into what would become an early life,

mostly defined by struggle and fear. His dad was absent. His stepdad was violent and

abusive in other ways. Gardner himself has said that what to find his earliest moments in life

was not joy, it was survival. His mother once told him, you can only depend on yourself.

The cavalry ain't coming. That mentality, that you don't have any safety net,

not really, that you should never rely on someone coming along to save you, that first and

foremost you should lean into your own grit and your own choices, that would be tested again

and again throughout much of Gardner's life. Long before he made it big in the world of Wall Street

investing, before he became a New in the world of Wall Street investing,

before he became a New York Times bestselling author and an inspiration to millions, before he was the focus of the 2006 biographical blockbuster, the pursuit of happiness. Gardner was just a kid

watching adults he loved get hurt, arguing over dinner, trying to make sense of a world that felt so

very unfair from the very start.

This is the story of a child who refused to become the product of his pain, a man who then took

that survival instinct and used it to build a life of meaning, purpose, and dignity after being a

homeless single father on the streets of San Francisco. This is the story of Chris Gardner,

and I'm telling it today

to lift you up, to not just entertain you, but maybe also make you think if he was able to

overcome what he overcame to build a beautiful life for himself. What can you overcome to help your

life be beautiful or more beautiful? Time for another year-end inspirational. Not Kentucky Fried,

but still a man searching for meaning,

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