I realize that the standard answer to the question, "What is the most important thing in life?" ...is your soul.  However I don't want to talk about the afterlife or the road to getting there. 

It's easy to rule out the material things as most important unless of course you are a materialistic person or someone without a moral compass. 

Now that we've eliminated these two things, what is left?

Well the best way to learn lessons in life is to walk the path to enlightenment.  What I mean is nothing teaches you like experience.  I wrestle with this question, What is the most important thing in life?

The answer comes down to two considerations; friendship or family?  I say both but for the sake of this article, I must put family just ahead of friendship. 

Seeing or knowing a real friend comes when your back is against the wall and they step forth to help.  Family ...They will always be there due to that blood bond. 

Is it even fair to pick between the two as to which is most important?  Can you place value of one over the other?  I think it's fair to say that family will stand by your side many years longer than a friend may.  For instance let's say you are wrongfully jailed in a foreign country where you can be forgotten.  At first friends and family come to your aid.  Over time, the only ones to stay with you would be family. 

You could argue that a wife or husband is family, they are not.   Look at divorce rates.  Near 60 percent of all marriages end in divorce.  No one would start a business with a partner with such poor chances of success.  This point should speak for itself.  A wife or husband is a friend you love and promise to hold dear for life, but in today's modern world we've learned that the promise of love is one we can walk upon.  The bond of marriage is an illusion.  Yet a brother, a sister, a mother a father... a grandparent, these bonds are like magnets that draw you together.  When times are most difficult it is your family that reminds you why we pour our souls into each other.  We may spread like scatterling but should anything trouble us, we pull together through a mystical emotional bond.  I think about how in China you can only have on child.  How hard it must be for children not to ever know the love of a brother or sister, but at least they have parents. 

Life is no test drive someone once told me.  You get nowhere without trying to experience life, test yourself, or take risks in hopes of better life.  When things go wrong you have friends to help you but family above all things can give you the emotional lift and support that no one else can.  Now before anyone thinks I'm denouncing the power of love a wife or husband can lift you up with, that is not true.  For that remaining percentage of people that marry and stay married... you have something special.  Perhaps you've reached that metaphysical bond where you are family that is not bound by blood.  But that makes my case... once again family is the most important thing in life.  I've read evidence of people dying of a broken heart.  When a wife or husband dies, they die soon after.  In this case, yes I do agree, that is family. May any of us find love that strong.

Last week I faced a hard reality like a cold Russian wind blowing through my soul.  It was a hard time in my life.  I found I wanted nothing more than to be alone.  When friends came to me, I silently fell into the shadows.  But when family came to me, I couldn't resist the positive energy they gave.   I felt an assurance of trust.  I accepted being cared for and I felt solace. 

Maybe just maybe it is family that helps us resolve the final decision to carry on.

Years ago my own brother took his life in despair.  His story is one I don't want to illustrate.  Yet I can tell you that he felt his family could not carry him through his hardship.  I do believe that for him he felt he lost the one thing most important in life; family.  I carry this burden with me for life.  It is etched in my soul.  This burden, this guilt is the sole reason I stood by my the women in my life that I loved. Perhaps it is why now I can't to give my heart again to anyone.  I felt the guilt (rightfully so or not) of not having saved my own brother from his despair.  I couldn't bear the guilt of not being there for anyone else that I loved.  The story must be told.   Family is the most important thing in life.  Hold them dear while you have them.  This is my story.  If you can apply it to your life so be it.  But for me... I know what the most important thing in life is.  I preach to my children this reality. Once when they fussed with each other I said, "Take care of each other.  One day daddy and mommy will be gone.  What you will have left is each other.  Remember, you two are the two that will be there for each other through thick and thin."  Darned if those boys don't cut the fussing, even if only for the day.  One day I will be gone.  One day when I'm years in the grave they will talk to other and say, "Remember when dad told us we'd be all the family we had left?"  I hope they think of me and smile.  Thankfully women live longer than men, I hope too their mothers are still around to offer that bond of love which transcends distance.  Most of all, I hope my children pass this lesson on to their own sons and daughters.