Gratitude to Thousands for Your Help 3 Years Ago

Gratitude to Thousands for Your Help 3 Years Ago


As 2014 comes to a close while we celebrate various Holidays around the world here is a message of thanks to all of you who reached out, shared messages of concern, support, love and those who gave tremendous amounts of effort and donated money to help release me and bring me home so I could be FREE once again and in time for Thanksgiving and Christmas with my family.
For years I have spent a great amount of time thinking about what family, friends, colleagues means or mean to me. Years ago I read articles by psychologists, counselors, therapists, motivational writers and speakers,  religious leaders that often said that human beings have...
very few "true" close friends in their lives,
while they have many to thousands of ...
basic friends,
passing friends,
friends from afar,
acquaintances.
In high school I tried to develop many friends yet was not successful doing that.
When I was working on my degree in architecture I tried through involvement in many clubs, assns, running for Sophmore VP (won thanks to my BIG BROTHER in AGU, Bill Smude who rand for president), running for the presidency of the college's student council (won), working on the newspaper and yearbook staffs and many other efforts to develop many friends.
When I was accepted as a leader/presenter at CPSI in 1979
I tried to develop friends with all the leaders then until 1981.
When I returned in 1988 as a participant I focused on making friends with other newbies or participants mostly.
When I joined GSA - Georgia Speakers Association, now NSA-GA Chapter I tried to become friends with ALL the members.
Since 1998 after Merry’s death I have focused on making, generating, developing friendships in Toastmasters, both the writing community and art community in Athens, NSA and NSA-GA and the various creativity movements or associations around the globe each year.
Since 2006 I have tried to re-generate and to create meaningful close friendships in Athens after almost 30 years of traveling for work or fun.
Recently I was shown through the ... 
love,
caring,
reaching out,
support,
risk taking of the FAB team – Friends of Alan Black
and
those who signed the FREE ALAN petition,
those who donated money to the Free Dr. Robert Alan Black fund
and the hundreds to thousands that wrote messages of love and support on Facebook
and I now understand on several other social media that I have still not looked at all...
that I have far more friends from the acquaintance type to the very close type than I ever imagined.
Thank you friends, ONE AND ALL!
Please make sure you spend time connecting with your family and with your various friends as often as you can during this Holidays Season and throughout 2015.
Do not take any of them for granted.
Appreciate
Share gratitude
as often as you can.
Do not let your life to take on the message of Cat Stevens' song:
CAT IN THE CRADLE 
Or that of Mike and the Mechanics song:
THE LIVING YEARS.
Comments
Charles Cave Happy Holidays Alan and all the best for 2015!
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Robert Alan Black thanks Charles, Kathysue, Sam, Marcia and Chris, Rosalie, Christopher and Vera.
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Dawn Wilson DePasquale Virtual hug. What a nice post!
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Steve Cohn A most joyful holiday season to you my friend. Happy to have you home.
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Linda Roholt Happy Everyday's my Robert Alan Black. Blessings to you. Thank you for sharing the value of caring and sharing. I'm sharing your message.
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Nico Botha Nice words Alan, always have to work hard on all aspects regarding our friends and our family even if we have to spend some money on them
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Robert Alan Black Nico we have so many memories from our travels with Ed, Dilts and even Tony (ha ha).
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Rosemary Rein Virtual hug and give one to Jessica Cummins Beasley for me.

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