Positive Impressions
I consider myself to be a very blessed individual. I live in the best country in the world, I have a career that has provided me with a great lifestyle, and I have the most beautiful family.
My family is my greatest blessing. I have a wife who is truly the greatest thing to ever happen to me (she edits these blogs, so who knows what she’ll put in here). Together, we’ve created a family in which our two daughters are not only each other’s best friends but also our whole world. My Dad is a man who I can look to in any situation, my Mom is strong, loving and inspiring, my brother is the person whose opinion I value the most, and I still admire my sister with the same awe as I did when I was five years old. On top of all of that, my love for my in-laws has added an additional dimension of greatness to my life that I never could have imagined.
What truly sets me and my family apart is that we were blessed with the greatest Grandmothers to have ever set foot on this earth. My Grandma Loucks was a BOSS! If love is measured by how easily your children or grandchildren cry when they talk about you, then no one can touch Noreen. My Nana Symons loved with all of her being. She had an incredible ability to embarrass both you and the employee at Tim Horton’s by gushing about how proud she was of you.
I believe that everyone has the ability to leave an imprint on you, and when I think about my Nana, I think she is the one who left one of greatest imprints on me (which I am still thankful for today): she left an imprint of positivity. When I was young, she gave me tapes (if you’re younger than 27, stop reading and Google “cassette tapes” and then come back when you’re done) of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale and ‘The Power of Positive Thinking’. Every night before I went to bed, I listened to these tapes. I listened to stories of people like Wilma Rudolph who grew up wearing leg braces and went on to win a gold medal in the Olympics, for sprinting. I may have been the only 10-year-old rocking these bedtime stories, but it had a lasting effect on me.
It wasn’t just those stories that left the imprint of positivity on me, it was her overall nature that showed me how far positivity could carry you. She was a shining example of what it meant to be a person of faith and to live a full life based on that faith.
I think of how she spent her days singing like she was in the Sunday church choir, how she would take your hand in hers and swing it at any given moment, or how much of a light she was in my life. I think of how everyone she met, she spoke about Prader-Willi Syndrome which is a rare genetic condition that led her to care for her son who suffered with the disease, all the while doing it with a smile on her face and love in her heart.
Since I was diagnosed with MS, I’ve used the positivity that she instilled in me; I’ve always said that this is a negative diagnosis but a positive prognosis. I have been unusually calm about my health, and I know it is because of my faith and the positivity imprinted on me by my Nana.
Find your positive imprint. And if you can, be the positive imprint for someone else.
Jesse