The Desire to have a Longer Life

By Apolinario Villalobos

The desire to live longer in this world is a manifestation of satisfaction felt about what are being experienced in this world. There is no regret for having been brought forth into the chaos that characterized the world. In other words, whoever has this feeling is happy.

The aforementioned feeling is the opposite of what is felt by a person who is never satisfied, one who always finds fault in others and in just anything that God created. He feels that he cannot tolerate such imperfections, hence, better for him to call it quits and say goodbye to life!

Man is given the choice, either to live in happiness or misery, based on how he conducts himself in this world. Some of us, who wallow in poverty, can still declare sincerely- felt happiness. While others who are neck-deep in luxury still have the heart to express sadness. Such differing feelings determine the desire to live life longer.

Every day should be viewed as a happy moment in life that occurs because we want it to happen. This attitude is the driving force that sustains the desire in us to live longer than expected. This force should not be affected by numbers such as age and time, and possible only by making ourselves oblivious to such.  Again, this can be made possible by making ourselves busy in doing something – good, of course.

On board a jeepney one day, I found myself sitting beside a senior citizen, a lady clad in white dress, obviously a devotee of the Virgin Mary. As the jeepney that I took was plying the route of Pasay-Baclaran, I presumed that she was on her way to the Baclaran Church, especially, because it was a Wednesday. Baclaran is the national shrine of the Our Lady of Perpetual Help with Wednesday being the devotion day.

As I could not contain my curiosity, I asked for her age to which she gladly replied, ninety-six! I was almost floored by her answer. I thought she was just past sixty. She told me that she has been a devotee of the Virgin Mary for more than fifty years. Every Wednesday, she wakes up early to take a jeepney to Baclaran, and every Friday she takes her time in going to Quiapo to fulfill her devotion to the Black Nazarene.

I compared the senior lady whom I befriended to another one I knew who devoted her time at bingo hall of her favorite shopping mall, from Monday to Thursday, as Friday to Sunday are for mahjong socials with her friends. At age sixty-three, she looked haggard with her face heavily made up, so that she looked more than eighty. She died last year, 2014, just four months before her sixty-third birthday.