In all of our lives there comes a time - almost always unexpectedly - when something happens that so changes our lives that we swear: “I will never forget this. My life will never be the same. Now, I have learned what matters most.”

After our “I will never forget this event” some of us are changed for a while, some of us for a little longer, and some of us forever. But none of us are ever the same again.

Certainly my family’s life not only hit a speed bump, but veered off the road and crashed when my father was diagnosed with ALS.  Courage was the only way to get through days that were both too long and too short, and every day after my father’s passing was an altogether new anguish, and a new lesson about what matters most. 

As part of our “what matters most” promise to ourselves, some of us spend more time with our kids, or with our parents, or with ourselves. Some of us spend more before it is too late, and some of us vow to spend less and find more value in what does not have a dollar sign on it. Some of us take more time to exercise, or exercise our love, or travel, or simply to chew slowly and savor the moments as we would any great meal.

The ways in which we come to know what matters most or express our change after our event changing moment are as varied as we are and as varied as the things that happen to us. But what finds parallel and resonance in all of us is the awareness that there is something we have been missing or forgetting, and what matters most is something that deserves our attention and our acting on it.

And in the realm of things that grab our attention, change our lives forever, and make us a member of a club we did not want to join and from which we cannot resign…little has the impact of ALS – whether you have ALS or are anywhere, in anyway, part of the ALS life changing family.

To that end, this is a first in a series of columns on The ALS Association website called WHAT MATTERS MOST. Here is a place where people with ALS, or people in the circle of those with ALS who have been touched by life changing moments, can share what they now realize matters most.

In doing so, people caught in the shadows of ALS tough times can bring forth what is the white light of the positive, the important to “to be valued” in life lessons.

This is healthy for the individual; it is healthy for those around them, and for those who live past them, and it is the courageous right thing in the face of the inevitable in all our lives.

This column will introduce you to individuals and share their “what matters most” lessons or reflections. If you would like to submit something from your experience and heart to WHAT MATTERS MOST, please email Noah@NoahbenShea.com

At the heart of each contributor’s story are these two truths:

• Even when we feel can’t be strong; we can still be a source of strength to others.
• Things don’t have to be good for us to be great.

In response to the featured person or story, I will speak to the issue, or dilemma, or loneliness, or courage and in combination we hopefully will be a source of strength to others. Certainly that is our intent, for caring is its own good intention and among what matters most in life.

And now I invite you to come and visit us at What Matters Most.

And pass the word to those whom the word will be an ally.

Thank you, even as thank you is not enough.

Noah

Noah benShea Copyright 2007 All Rights Reserved 

WHAT MATTERS MOST

Noah benShea

Copyright 2007 All Rights Reserved

Love is a ladder; it allows us to climb out of ourselves. But the opportunity to express love or know you are in love doesn’t always arrive on a rainy night, when you’re sitting in front of a fireplace, with a string orchestra playing, and the cameras rolling.

The really heroic moments in life are almost always private, and the courage of them is also private. But in this privacy is our shared humanity, and the shared heroism of day to day living, and what matters most – even in memory.   

Here are a few moments taken from the personal diary of Jacqueline French whose husband Tom, a brilliant surgeon, too young, too soon, passed away from ALS. Tom, Jacqueline and their miracle daughter Lauren were recently the subject of a very moving documentary entitled Mind Games.

Jacqueline and Tom, in the face of what Tom called “The Beast,” smile in confirmation that their love is blessed. They don’t deny what is. But they more than refuse to be defeated by it; instead they see Tom’s struggle simply as the stage of events on which their love finds expression, and blessing, and is played out. Surely this is something worth remembering, something to remind all of us about what matters most, and who, is with us even as they are missed.

Jacqueline witnesses in the Northern Lights, and when sitting in Tom’s chair, how porous is the veil between the worlds. Tom is present even his absence. Who among us hasn’t learned that much of what we do not see is not necessarily missing and is rather an invitation to lose our blindness and have vision for the miracle behind the scene. 

To love and be loved is life’s most noble adventure. It is the stuff of knights and dragons, and carrying on, and refusing to be conditioned by what the world delivers but by what our heart insists is true and good. It is the heroism of caring, and this is the cosmic night light by which any of us can find our way even when the way appears lost.

Love is a candle in the wind.

Noah