Self-Will To Healthy Self

CEBU, Philippines - He lingered his way to the buffet table. Then shovelled in the main dishes of ox tongue, chicken and roasted beef. Added the salads to the mound on his plate before taking slices of fruit and cake on a platter and then headed for the table with two mound-filled plates. Without even saying grace, he ate as though it was his last meal. It was indeed. That night a massive stroke caused his heart to rupture and then collapse.

Self-will is a dangerous thing. Man can sometimes kill himself by the very will his chemistry was designed with. It used to be that communicable diseases like influenza were humanity killers. These days an epidemic of self-will is causing an outbreak of non-communicable diseases. In recent years, the major killers of adults in the Philippines have shifted to cardiovascular diseases and cancer.

Non-communicable diseases are also called lifestyle or behaviour diseases because its risk factors are associated with how a person lives, or more specifically, how a person eats. The four major lifestyle-related non-communicable diseases in the Philippines are cardiovascular diseases, cancers, diabetes mellitus and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases. It is not that health practitioners and nutritionists have been slack about warning the populace on eating the wrong food or eating in excess. It is just that people on self-will don't heed the warning until the will can no longer make a way.

It is not about aging. But supposedly, the more a person ages, the more ought to be his ability to control the self. But self will is a subtle, silent traitor. Self-will is the very thing that runs from the mind to the heart to the fingers to the fork to the stomach that eventually prompts a person to indulge on something he ought to avoid. Self-will is a mental faculty by which one deliberately chooses or decides. Self-will entails deliberate purposefulness and intention.