By Mike — Ondaroof

I didn’t arrive at these thoughts sitting on a mountain, in a quiet cabin, or after retiring with a big savings account and a clean bill of health.

I arrived here in a wheelchair, with a body that doesn’t always cooperate, after watching my dad decline, and after talking with elders who could suddenly see life with crystal clarity—just when they had the least time left to use it.

If you had known me years ago, you might say, “He only talks like this because he got sick and can’t chase money anymore.”

And you would be partly right.

My illness did slow me down. But it didn’t create this way of seeing—it stripped away enough noise for me to hear what was already there.

We are born knowing love. We forget it. Then life—sometimes gently, sometimes brutally—tries to remind us.

This story is about that forgetting—and that remembering.

We All Start With the Same Gift

Watch a baby for five minutes and you will see it. They reach out. They cry when others cry. They light up when someone smiles. They don’t care about race, money, titles, or who owns what.

Before we learn anything else, we know how to connect, trust, reach for comfort, and offer comfort without calculating what we will receive in return.

Life slowly builds a shell over that first understanding. Not because we are bad, but because we become afraid.

How Fear Slowly Replaces Love

Somewhere along the way, we start hearing different messages:

  • You have to be better than others.
  • Money is safety.
  • Don’t let anyone take advantage of you.
  • Be tough.
  • Don’t be so sensitive.
  • Success means winning, not simply living.

At first, love is our default and fear is the exception. Then fear becomes the default, and love has to sneak through the cracks.

We learn to compare, compete, protect, perform, chase status, and hide weakness. Even people with wealth and power have had to remind themselves that life is short and ego is a poor guide. That inner battle is not new, and none of us is exempt from it.

The Fast Lane Makes Us Forget

Before MS, I was always moving: military, paramedic work, civilian life, bills, responsibilities, trying to do right by my family, trying to make something of myself.

There is nothing wrong with working hard. But there is a cost to always moving: you may not hear what your own spirit has been trying to tell you.

When we rush, we can miss the lonely person beside us. We can accept unfair systems without questioning them. We can forget to ask, “Is this love—or simply habit and fear?”

Illness slowed me down. Disability locked me into a pace I never would have chosen. But in that slowness, I began to notice elders who had lost almost everything and still lit up at connection; people nearing the end of life who knew exactly what mattered; and my own heart becoming softer, not weaker.

The Moment You See It

Once your eyes open, certain things become difficult to ignore: great wealth beside preventable suffering, people judging circumstances they have never lived, and families divided by ego or certainty while still calling it love.

I used to wonder whether I was being too harsh or becoming bitter. But when I sit quietly, the deeper message I hear is not anger:

Love does not need people beneath it. Love is not threatened by fairness. Love does not hoard while others suffer.

That voice is the part of us that remembers how we began.

Did Illness Change Me?

Yes, illness knocked me out of the race. It also showed me that the race was never the point.

When I look back at my years in the military and as a paramedic, I see that caring for people was always part of me. I have held the hands of dying people and watched families shatter in hospital hallways. There is no way for me to pretend that money or status is the highest prize.

MS didn’t give me a new heart. It stopped me long enough to hear the one I already had.

What People Remember

If you want to know what matters, listen to someone who has outlived friends and family, someone approaching the end of life, or someone rebuilding an identity after losing their health.

They rarely speak about brands, titles, houses, or followers. They remember whether you showed up, listened, forgave, loved honestly, and made them feel that they mattered.

The meaning I see now is simple:

We are here to remember love—and then pass that remembering on.

We Do Not Have to Wait

I understand why this message can sound like giving up to people still moving in the fast lane. But I am not giving up on life. I am waking up to it.

I am not saying, “Quit your job. Stop trying. Don’t build anything.” I am saying: don’t wait until you lose your health, your parents, your mobility, or your time to realize that love was the point all along.

We can begin now by listening more deeply, questioning systems that do not feel fair, choosing enough over endless accumulation, noticing people who are often ignored, and asking, “Does this feel like love—or fear?”

I am not writing because I have arrived or because I have all the answers. I am writing so that a stranger, a grandchild, a tired caregiver, or someone who has just received a diagnosis might someday read this and know they are not weak for wanting more love and less noise.

You are not alone in seeing the world this way.

I’m right here with you.

— Mike (Ondaroof)