Nevada sunset - This is my daughter’s novice attempt at photography. She snapped this photo using my brother’s digital camera (inside a moving van) while enroute to Las Vegas when she joined a study/leisure trip with 11 other Filipino high school students last May 2006. From Milpitas, California, they took the long drive to L.A. then to Las Vegas with their official chaperone, Carmen ‘Baby’ Prieto driving. It looks amateurish and a gazillion cry from Señor Enrique’s amazing shots — which I have been earnestly browsing on lately — but nevertheless I am proudly posting it here.

When I see sunsets, I always think of old age. Very cliché-ish. The sunset of your life… the sunrise of your dream… the mid sun of your career…. the twilight of your love…. and so on. But really, sunsets never fail to evoke in me this association of the old, the wrinkled, the stooped body, the seemingly deep, longing and faraway look in an aged person’s eyes as he or she sits in the veranda gazing blankly at space.

I don’t want to grow old. Not that I want to avoid the inevitable and explore the world and universe for the fountain of youth. Nothing of that. When I say I don’t want to grow old - I mean I don’t want to live to such an age when I am no longer of use to anyone. I don’t want to reach that stage in life when I would have to wear disposable diapers, always needing someone even just to go to the bathroom. I don’t want to be sitting in an armchair, with that faraway look in my eyes as if waiting.. waiting for something or someone that may never come. I don’t want to be shooed away from the kitchen when I try to help around - and my children and grandchildren admonishing me to just go to my room or sit in the living room and wait for my meals.

I want to continue living a fruitful life to my last breathing day. I would much prefer a sudden demise while performing a task than while waiting for the black hooded creature to snatch me away as I lie down helplessly in a lonely dark room.

And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. (Abraham Lincoln)