You Always Have a Choice: What a Gen Z Voice Is Teaching Us About Grief, Kindness, and Responsibility
There’s a moment in every man’s life when the world stops feeling theoretical.
Loss becomes personal.
Pressure becomes internal.
And the stories we’ve told ourselves about strength stop working.
For Carter Helbig, that moment came early.
In a conversation that’s both disarming and deeply sobering, Carter—an 18-year-old whose graduation speech went viral for its honesty—joins Will Schneider and Jon Macaskill on Men Talking Mindfulness to talk about grief, gratitude, and the quiet power of choice.
What makes this episode stand out isn’t Carter’s age.
It’s his clarity.
Grief That Doesn’t Harden You
Carter speaks openly about losing his grandfather to suicide. He doesn’t dramatize it. He doesn’t sanitize it either. He talks about the confusion, the anger, the unanswered questions—and the way grief can quietly shape how a young man sees himself and the world.
Instead of becoming bitter or numb, Carter made a decision.
Not a dramatic one.
A human one.
He chose to stay soft.
That choice didn’t remove the pain. But it changed how he carried it.
This is one of the core themes of the episode: grief doesn’t automatically make us wise. It can just as easily make us closed, suspicious, or reactive. What matters is whether we let loss turn us inward—or widen our capacity for compassion.
“You Never Know What Someone Is Carrying”
One of the most resonant lines from Carter’s viral speech—and this conversation—is deceptively simple:
You never know what someone goes home to.
In a culture wired for outrage, comparison, and snap judgment, this idea is radical.
Carter challenges the reflex to assume malice. He talks about learning to look for incompetence, misunderstanding, or pain before labeling someone as bad or hostile. It’s not about excusing behavior. It’s about interrupting the cycle of escalation.
This mindset isn’t weakness.
It’s discipline.
It requires presence.
It requires humility.
It requires slowing down long enough to remember that everyone is fighting something invisible.
Gen Z, Social Media, and Silent Pressure
The episode also shines a light on something many older generations underestimate: the emotional weight young men are carrying today.
Carter describes growing up in a world where comparison never shuts off. Where algorithms amplify insecurity. Where silence feels safer than honesty—and asking for help feels like failure.
He speaks to the quiet isolation many Gen Z men feel. Not because they don’t care—but because they don’t know where to put what they’re carrying.
This is where Men Talking Mindfulness bridges generations.
Will and Jon don’t talk down to Carter. They meet him with respect. They name the patterns they’ve seen in veterans, leaders, and fathers—the same ones now showing up earlier in young men’s lives.
Different platforms.
Same pressure.
Same human nervous system.
The Power of Choice
At the center of the episode is one grounding truth:
You always have a choice.
Not a choice about what happens to you.
A choice about how you respond.
Carter doesn’t present this as motivational fluff. He presents it as responsibility.
You can choose kindness.
You can choose to ask for help.
You can choose to pause instead of react.
You can choose to treat people like humans—even when you’re hurting.
These choices don’t go viral the way outrage does. But they change lives quietly, consistently, and for the better.
This episode is a reminder that mindfulness isn’t about escaping pain. It’s about staying present with it long enough to choose wisely.
And sometimes, wisdom shows up in younger voices than we expect.
🎧 Listen to the full episode:
You Always Have a Choice: Gen Z, Grief & Kindness with Carter Helbig
https://mentalkingmindfulness.com
