Repeated brushstrokes

The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.

- Anatole France -

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The images you see are small parts of larger paintings that hang in my home, just a snippet of the greater images painted upon once blank and featureless canvas. The hands (and imaginations) that created them placed those brushstrokes one over and beside the other until they combined to create one complete picture belong to my father and his only grandson, my nephew @mrbonkers. I display them proudly and they, along with other paintings by both, have great value to me.

My father passed away three years ago and if he could would tell you he was content with his life, that he'd lived a full and engaged life and that he filled the blank canvas of his life, painted his masterpiece, with the repeated brushstrokes required to help him look back on it without regret. As his son who shared some of it and who can now look back on it in full I'd agree with him. It wasn't always an easy life, it was difficult in the extreme at times, but I know he was content with how he painted it.

Looking upon the young life of my nephew, the kid I call @mrbonkers, and my niece who's known here as @smallsteps I see they're doing the very same thing, living life as best they can, although they're in the early stages both still very much children. They have thoughts and attitudes and make daily choices that impact their lives just like an adult does - differently of course, but towards the same end, a life - and though they don't have the awareness of it yet, they're adding brushstrokes to their blank canvass as my father did, myself and everyone else on the planet as well.

Someday I'll apply my last stroke of colour and my painting will be complete, death is quite final...but not yet, not for any of us, and that is something to be celebrated, life I mean, which is why I work so hard at colouring my blank 'work-in-progress' canvas with the brushstrokes as best I can, while I can.

I have regrets and believe most people - if not all because we are all human - also have them to some degree, lesser or greater, but there's no way to erase the situations that caused them; all we can do is keep applying brushstrokes, adjusting the colour, style and application, and there in lies my point; *we have the ability to change, to improve, adapt, grow and develop, and it's through those things we're able to paint a better masterpiece over time. We don't have to accept that which came before, we can improve it and that means everything including thought, attitude, actions and eventually the outcomes we attain.

Each of us are different and our life-paintings will reflect that, but we have commonality also, we're all alive, and I believe that comes with some responsibility to live our lives as best we can for ourselves and those we value around us. It's done in different ways, that's another thing we have in common, individuality, but no matter how it's done it needs - in my opinion - to be done now because tomorrow may be too late.

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I wonder how you approach your own life and what repeated brushstrokes you add to your masterpiece as you pass through it, how they benefit or impact upon you, how you learn and how you feel you'll look back upon your life in years to come. If you have any thoughts or comments please feel free to leave them below, and you may like to expand upon them in a posting initiative I'm doing called #myreflections hosted in the Reflections Community. Follow that link for guidelines.