So, what is the meaning of being alive?
Is it the pursuit of a happy family and the enjoyment of young time, or the pursuit of career success and continuous wealth? If you think it's the best choice for your life, but God leaves you alone, would you still be willing?
Everyone has a different understanding of life, it is often said that life is short and needs to be lived meaningfully, but if it were Mba Godot who heard this, he probably wouldn't even blink his eyes because he thought that only death could bring him ease and relief.
At the end of 2016, Mba Godot celebrated his 146th birthday, and his great-great-grandchildren came to celebrate him, as well as prepare cakes and fruits.
Reporters also rushed to report on this particular event. However, despite such a lively atmosphere, Mba Godot did not feel the slightest joy.
As he grew older, his desire to express himself became less and less, and in the face of lonely days, he felt that life was neither worth nor meaningful. He looked at the juniors present looking at him curiously, which reminded him of the immature eyes of his grandsons and great-grandchildren in the past, and his heart was warm at that time.
He will kindly extend his hand and talk to them cordially, telling them about his past glories. However, since witnessing the death of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Mba Godot's affection for children is no longer as deep as it once was.
Mba Godot is the most respected elder in the village, and his birthday is a big day in the village, and many people come to him in groups to pray for longevity and well-being. At the birthday party, he received a candle cake with "1", "4", and "6" written on it, and everyone around him happily took pictures to commemorate it.
When everyone asks him about his birthday wishes, the children are already thinking about how to help him make it happen. However, looking at the cake, Mba Godot said nothing. He may be wondering how long he will live, and how sad it is to see these children grow up, get married, grow old, and even die.
He may be afraid that he will be the last one alive, leaving his lonely self in this world.
Mba Godot, a long-lived old man, knows to his children and grandchildren that his only wish is death. To outsiders, this wish is somewhat out of place.
He didn't need to work hard to live two or three times the age of ordinary people, which was a fortunate thing, but when it came to him, it turned into pain and despair. He was born in 1870, a time of opposition to oppression and a yearning for freedom.
The news of his longevity was circulated by later generations, although he did not sensational the world as Lenin, the proletarian revolutionary. At the time of his birth, Indonesia was still a country colonized by the Dutch.
At the time of the interview, he had forgotten most of his childhood, and only remembered that counting him, there were ten siblings in the family. His parents were peasants facing the loess with their backs to the sky, and their families were poor, so they had little to do to provide him with education and education, and his parents rarely disciplined them.
Mba Godo's childhood memories were limited to playing with friends and family around the countryside, but his age was questioned a few years before his death. Because birth registration in Indonesia did not begin until 1900, many suspect that he did not live to be in his 140s.
Although Mba Gododo can no longer remember the exact year of his birth, he remembers playing in the fields with his friends as a child and watching the nearby sugar mill gradually build up.
He used his memories to paint a picture of what the sugar mill looked like, telling some of the stories that were built at that time. After comparison and analysis by the staff, he was registered as born on December 31, 1870 in 2014.
Although this method of registration is somewhat unreliable, the same method is used by people in other countries who are unable to determine their birthdays.
Despite his advanced age, Mba Godot's attitude towards life has never changed. He was once forced to start working on the farm early because of his poor family, and after getting married, he fought for his family.
Despite many difficulties, he persevered in his life and played an important role in the War of Independence. Although Mba Godot's ID card may not have been registered at the same time as his real age, it does not change his outlook on life.
He believes that the value of life is not in age, but in how we spend each day. As a result, he still lives a full and meaningful life. Despite the difficulties in Mba Godot's life, he never complained.
He faces life's challenges with a positive attitude and always maintains a love for life. This spirit has made him the longest-lived person in Indonesia. Despite the challenges of Mba Godo's life, he never gave up.
His tenacity and love of life have brought him endless joy in life. His story teaches us that as long as we are determined, we can find our own happiness in life.
Mba Gododo once felt helpless because of the hardships of life, but the care and help of his family gave him new hope. With his hard work and perseverance, he finally realized his dream, had a happy family, and lived to be 146 years old.
Despite the war in his home country, his family has remained unharmed. His tenacity and perseverance, as well as his good fortune, contributed to his longevity and happiness.
He spent the last 20 years of his life with his wife, watching his children and grandchildren grow up from generation to generation, but his old age never came. Even while waiting for Godot, he married his third wife at the age of 70 and fought in World War II.
He joined the local militia and made his own contribution to the war against aggression. This period of war is his proudest memory, and it is also the story he is always willing to share in front of his younger generations.
He told these stories of bullets to his grandson, to his great-grandson, and even to his great-grandson, until he got tired of it. Even the proudest things can become boring to talk about too much, especially for people like him who have been alive all along, and the more he talks about it, the more he thinks of those relatives and friends who left him many years ago.
After the war, he became addicted to smoking because of his years of military career, and when he had nothing to do, he took two puffs to relieve his fatigue.
Mba Godot's desire to smoke has always been suppressed by his financial constraints and his health concerns. Only when he can't bear it anymore will he take a puff or two.
However, the 146-year-old's attitude towards life and death is so profound. Whenever he was annoyed, he always held a slow-burning cigarette in his hand. Although smoking is harmful to health, in Mba Godot's eyes, it seems to be just a joke.
In the journey of life, he once longed to have cigarettes 24 hours a day, but tobacco did not take him away. Until the death of his fourth wife in 1988, Mba Godot had seen 12 grandchildren start a family and 17 great-grandchildren marry and have children.
He survived four wives and children, his siblings, and even generations of children and grandchildren, but he himself was never taken away by God.
Since Mba Godot let go of his inner restraints, he no longer holds back his appetite, whether it is food, drinks, or cigarettes, he indulges them to the fullest. It's just that his heart is tormented, watching his relatives die one by one.
He couldn't help but wonder why he was still alive today. He recalls that as a child, he seemed to get sick less than other children, and even when he played around in the bitter cold and heat, he rarely caught a cold.
When his family was in harmony, he also participated in various battles, but he was lucky to survive. Some even say he was lucky. However, is it true that there is a blessing in the future if you don't die in a great calamity?
However, at the age of 92, Mba Godot also had a rough time, when a serious illness left him in bed, struggling to catch his breath.
Mba Godo, who lives in Indonesia and has limited access to medical care, was once judged by doctors to be incurable. But he relied on his perseverance to recuperate at home for several months and successfully cured the disease.
Although his health deteriorated since then, he never suffered from any serious illness. However, when he was 122 years old, the death of his youngest child made his heart feel like he was dead, and he lost hope in life.
He chose to take the funeral as an opportunity to prepare a coffin and tombstone for himself, thinking that he would soon leave this world. However, the items sat in the warehouse for so many years that Mba Godot himself forgot they existed.
In 2014, after Mba Godot got his ID card, his physical condition began to decline significantly, but he didn't mind it. His vision problems prevented him from watching TV, so he passed the time by listening to the radio.
He also had hearing problems, and in order to hear the radio better, he was specially fitted with a pair of hearing aids. Mba Gordo has always maintained a good lifestyle, going to bed early and waking up early every day, never wasting time.
His daily routine is very regular, every day after eating, he will go for a walk, and then sit under the eaves to enjoy the scenery, listen to the radio, and be in a daze. In the village, he didn't have many friends, because of the large age gap, he always looked at those old people with a sense of distance and respect, and this seriousness and respect made him feel a little alienated.
When the villagers learned that Mba Godot was in his 140s, his status rose from "ordinary old man" to "mascot". In Indonesia, people always have a mysterious reverence for the longevity of the elderly, and it is often the case that people will organize visits to him, and there are even many journalists who will interview him to learn about the daily life and physical condition of the longevity of the elderly.
Although many people want to know the secret of Mba Godot's longevity, he still lives an ordinary life every day, eating coarse tea and light rice. He said that his longevity was not because there was any secret, but because he was more disciplined and physically fit than others.
In Mba Godot's mind, his longevity was more like being forgotten by death than being blessed by heaven, and was a punishment rather than a reward for him.
Mba Godot, who has experienced the death of dozens of relatives, friends and future generations, is full of pain and depression. Although longevity may be the envy of many, he doesn't see it that way.
Whenever someone asked him the secret of his longevity, he always replied simply, "Patience." It sounds like a bit of a "Versailles", but for Mba Godot, longevity is waiting for death to come, and neither war nor illness can leave this world.
In the last decades of his life, he spoke less and less, because years of loneliness had closed his heart and he didn't want to endure more despair and helplessness.
As his physical condition deteriorated, those around him could feel that Mba Godot's nostalgia for the world was gradually decreasing. He once mentioned in an interview that his children have grown up**, started a family, and no longer need his existence.
His wish was to be able to leave this world, and with each passing day, his thirst for death deepened, and he was tired of living alone, and only hoped that it would be over.
However, as he grew older, Mba Godot's health deteriorated, and he needed to be cared for by others and could not leave people around him. His grandchildren take almost turns taking turns by his side to take care of him.
He was no longer able to go out on crutches himself, and needed the help of his great-great-grandson to move within a limited range. Eating has also changed from making it yourself to needing great-grandson help to feed it.
He also needs his great-grandson to help him go to the toilet, take a bath, etc., which makes his self-esteem suffer greatly. He used to be able to go to the battlefield with a gun, but now he can't even complete the basic eating, drinking, and Lazar independently.
Although he expressed his desire to die early in front of his children and journalists more than once, this wish was never realized. Mba Godot is also very aware of this, and he knows that such vexatious aggression will only make people's hearts ache.
Therefore, he would not mention these things until someone asked. 2017 may be the happiest year of Mba Godot's life and the last turning point in his life.
Due to the gradual aging of various body functions, his life is coming to an end. On April 12, Mba Gododo was admitted to the hospital for observation due to heart failure.
Although medical technology does not guarantee that he is completely **, it can at least allow the patient to live for a few more years. Especially celebrities like Mba Godot, who have attracted the most attention, cannot be negligent on the part of the hospital.
Mba Godot was bent on death, but his great-grandson insisted on taking him home to recuperate. Although he said he didn't want to spend money on hospitalization, the children knew what he really thought.
At first, the children objected to Mba Godo's wayward behavior, but seeing that he was uncooperative, they could only agree to his request. Mba Godot knew that his time might be short, so the children were busy taking care of him in the last stages of his life.
Mba Godot's body gradually weakened and his food intake decreased. Finally, on April 30, 2017, he died at home at the age of 147. The coffin headstone he had chosen in his early years came in handy 24 years later, when he was buried by his children in a place of his own choosing, finally fulfilling his long-held wish and leaving the life he had always wanted to give up.
The death of Mba Godot is deeply regrettable. Even in 2017, when medical technology was advanced, doctors assured his family that he would live for a few more years, but Mba Godot's wish was to die, and no one could stop him.
His death was not a painful illness, but the end of his life. However, when interviewing Mba Godot's child, Suyanto, he said that the old man had an extremely light diet when he returned home, and did not eat or drink even for a while before he died.
It is speculated that the old man may have shown signs of improvement after returning home, just like his sudden illness when he was 92 years old. However, he knew that if he survived the disease, he would have to live many more years on earth, which was unacceptable to him, so he chose to die on a hunger strike and did not continue to live.
Perhaps because the heart could not bear the burden on the body, Mba Godot had a premonition that his limit was approaching. In order to get rid of his pain as soon as possible, he decided to go on a hunger strike for early relief.
However, in any case, Mba Godo's life has become a thing of the past, leaving only memories in the hearts of loved ones. According to later research, if Godot's stated age is true, he is not only the longest-lived person in Indonesia, but also probably the longest-lived human in the world.
But is it necessarily good to live longer? Is it true that human life becomes more meaningful the longer it lasts? When we look back at the life of Mba Godot, we will find that his social value is mainly reflected in the first seventy years.
Seventy years later, his life has become boring, and he can only watch others grow old, what is the point of such a second half of his life? Therefore, in life, we should not only pursue the length of time we live, but also think more about our own ideals and hopes, and experience more of the various forms of life.
The meaning of life is not the length of life, but what you leave for the world. Although Cao Chong died early, he left behind a historical allusion that makes people think deeply; Although Huo Quzhi died of illness at the age of 23, he left a lifetime of fame.
Only by creating one's own value in society can life be more meaningful, can we feel the warmth and coldness of the world, be needed by others, and obtain true happiness.