Dying Man’s Daily Journal – More family

I am still basking in that warm fuzzy comfortable feeling that I wrote on yesterday. Acts of kindness can produce such a wonderful feeling. I wrote of a very very nice thing done for us by our children and posted pictures of all. Hey, I have a right to show them off and brag.

I have written often of what a high tech computer guy I am NOT. Rob and kids, sorry about your picture, I am not sure why it will not enlarge when clicked on. I used 3 different pictures same result. I even carried my text over to an entirely new posting and re-uploaded the pictures, same result. I just don’t understand it, can anyone offer me any suggestions on what I am doing wrong?

While I am feeling all warm and fuzzy about family, something very important has occurred to me. I have shared pictures of my “Canadian” brothers, Eric and Robin. I have never shared pictures of my “South African” brother and sister. Physically, many miles may separate us, but that certainly doesn’t separate them from my heart. Now I suppose technically the term half brother and half sister would apply, but I don’t do anything in half way measures.

I give you my brother Bryan, sister-in-law Vicki, niece Sandy and her (at the time) new husband Wade. My nephew Barry and my sister Anita are missing from the picture but I will get one of them up soon. I will be writing more about them all soon.

I am such a lucky man to have the family I do, I know it and I appreciate it. It is one thing to be blessed by wonderful people or wonderful things in your life. It is an entirely different thing to recognize and appreciate them for the true blessings they are.

Here we go with another “Bill” statistic, nah, I will just say many. I am sure there are many of us,right at this moment that do have blessings in their lives but are so wrapped up in the issue of the moment we forget to recognize and appreciate all that we do have. Actually, I am sure it applies to everyone at certain times or points in their lives, well me anyway.

For me anyway, I think it works like this. This could apply Vi, my daughters, my family so, so many people in my life. I will try to explain what I mean. Say, I meet someone, this could be a future spouse, a new coworker, anyone really and I am blown away by how wonderfully kind and special they are. Time goes by and as I get to know them more and more they can often loose that special glow they once held for me.

Now it is true, when you first meet someone, anyone generally they have on their, what I call “party manners”, being out to make a good impression. As you get to know them better and they become more comfortable with you, those “party manners” fall by the wayside and the true them comes out and may not be quite the same person.

But, I have to question myself is that always the case? How many times is it that my perception of them is what has actually changed? Could it be the same wonderful characteristics I saw and so admired initially are still there. As we get to know people, their wonderful characteristics become the norm, what we expect of that person. With time somehow wonderful can seemingly be down graded to the norm, in our minds. They didn’t change, my perception of them did. How sad is that, wonderful characteristics suddenly are no longer recognized as such and become our normal expectations of this person. They themselves haven’t changed, it is our perception that has changed. What, we once recognized as true blessing in our life have been down graded to become just a normal expectation.

All of our lives are filled with so many blessing, It is just they are no longer recognized for what they really are. How often is it that it is only after we have lost something do we really realize what an unrecognized blessing it was, when we had it.

So often we don’t realize the blessing until it is gone, but at the same time we often don’t realize what we are missing out on until our blessing arrives.