I am within two years of what people kindly call the golden years. That marker means something to me — not as a occasion for nostalgia, but as a vantage point. I have lived through enough of history to watch the world change, and to measure what that change has cost.
The last four decades have produced a revolution in communication unprecedented in human history. Information moves faster than thought. A message composed in London reaches Manila before the next heartbeat and spreads across a nation within minutes. We have never had this before, and we have not yet reckoned seriously with what it means.
The standard response has been to call technology neutral. The internet, social media, artificial intelligence — tools, nothing more. Their morality, we are told, lies entirely with the user. But philosopher Carissa Veliz has made a persuasive case against that comfort. Technology is not of God. It is man-made, which means it is designed with intention, shaped by interest, and loaded with the biases of its creators. More often than not, those biases run toward control. Toward dominance. Toward the capture of attention and the management of perception.
Two weeks ago I resurrected my old Panasonic Lumix LX5 and have been carrying it everywhere since. Most of my shooting has been from inside the car, in traffic, catching whatever the city throws at the window. I was inspired by David Bradford’s drive-by photographs, work I first came across in the mid-2000s that quietly stayed with me all these years.
I shoot by instinct. My eyes go to color, to a graphic moment, to light that cuts hard across a face or a wall, to whatever feels like it is on the edge of becoming a story. I am not always sure what I am after. Sometimes it is beauty. Sometimes it is just light. Sometimes it is a moment that feels right in a way I cannot fully explain.
But somewhere along the way I started asking myself: are these images actually beautiful? And the moment I asked that, I realized I had already lost something. Because the question itself pulls you out of seeing and into performing. You stop shooting what arrests you and start shooting what you think will arrest someone else.
The problem is that beauty has become a crowded place. The digital revolution did not just make cameras accessible, it flooded the world with images. Landscapes, sunsets, perfect golden light — photographs that once stopped you cold now scroll past without a second glance. We have seen everything too many times. The magic is still there somewhere but we have watched the trick performed so often we can no longer feel it.
And it is not just beauty that has been crowded out. The visual language of photography itself — the reflection in a puddle, the stark juxtaposition, the decisive moment frozen mid-stride — these gestures belong to everyone now. Today, everyone can be a Fan Ho, Bresson, or Ansel Adams. When you raise your camera to catch a reflection in a rain-soaked street, you have to honestly ask yourself: is this my eye, or have I simply absorbed what a good photograph is supposed to look like?
That question used to not matter as much. When only a few people were making photographs, an image like that felt discovered. Now it feels inherited.
So what is left? I think what is left is intention. There is a difference between going out to collect likes and going out to communicate — to use an image to say something true about your experience of the world, the specific texture of what it feels like to move through a city, to sit in traffic, to notice what everyone else is too busy to see. That is not something an algorithm can replicate. It is not something abundance can erase. It is yours, if you are honest enough to chase it and patient enough to wait for it.
In 2020, I came across the podcast of Bishop Robert Barron while searching for topics on philosophy. At the time, I had been going to church regularly, but like many Catholics, I did not deeply understand what my faith truly meant. I practiced Catholicism largely out of tradition and the habits I learned from my family, although I had also been active in church youth groups during my teenage years.
After listening to his podcast, I was struck by the clarity of his explanations and the depth of his intellect. It appealed to me in a way I did not expect and awakened a deeper curiosity about the faith. I began listening to his talks every night before going to sleep, reading books he recommended, and watching many of his videos. Slowly, my relationship with the faith became more intentional rather than merely habitual.
I drove to Tagaytay the other day to speak to some high school students on the topic of friendship beyond graduation. While thinking about my approach, I decided to go back to fundamentals and simply tell my story and my relationship with my friends. I started from our teenage years all the way to the present.
I wanted them to see that someone my age — someone who now appears more formal, controlled in action and mature — once had a past they could relate to. And I think this is the power of stories: people listen to them, people are entertained by them, and through them, ideas quietly make their way across.
I was amused by how engaged the students were. They listened closely, laughed often and even asked questions about the people in the stories. They did not ask for a lesson, and I did not explicitly give them one. I simply described what friendship meant to me through stories, yet in the end, they brought home their own insights.
Lake
The experience reminded me of Prof. EDMO. He was a great writer, speaker and teacher. In class, he would often present complicated PowerPoint slides but simplify them through stories. Because of this, we were able to understand difficult ideas naturally and draw lessons from them ourselves. It never felt forced; it felt more like an exchange of stories than a formal lecture.
People listen to stories for many reasons. Sometimes it is curiosity, sometimes the lessons they carry, and sometimes the simple desire to connect with another person. Stories humanize people. This is why we often remember individuals not through frameworks or achievements, but through the stories they tell and the stories told about them. I think the students listened not merely because they were expected to, but because stories allowed a genuine connection to form between us.
Keso de Bola Cheescake at Bag of Beans with Ingrid
A good story is emotionally charged — whether through laughter, fear or sadness. The actions of the characters should align with the values they portray, making the story feel believable and authentic. And a good story should be engaging enough to leave people wanting more. When these elements come together, listeners begin to reflect on the story and draw their own insights from it. That is what makes a good story powerful.
Perhaps this is what teaching should be. It should be like a good story — subtle, unforced and relatable. Teaching should feel less like the downloading of frameworks and methods, and more like a meaningful conversation, because people often remember good stories far longer than they remember frameworks.
What stays with me most about friendship is that it rarely begins in grand ways. More often, it starts subtly— a question, a shared laugh, a common interest, a random seat beside someone who will one day become part of your life story.
Think about your best friend today and try to remember how your friendship started.
On my first day of pre-college course in 1995, I walked into the campus of University of Asia and the Pacific knowing absolutely no one. I was the only student from my high school who entered the program. It was a summer course meant to prepare us for college life — executive functions, time management, character formation, essay writing. At seventeen, those words sounded sophisticated and intimidating all at once.
Everything about that first day felt like stepping into another world. Our first paper was about college. Almost everyone wrote the same thing: college is the real world. The lecturer, Chuck Palenzuela, laughed at our answers. Not mockingly, but knowingly. He pointed out that none of us could actually explain what we meant by “the real world.”
But perhaps that was the point. At that age, there were simply no words big enough to explain what adulthood felt like from a distance. The real world was excitement and fear happening at the same time. It was the thrill of newfound freedom mixed with the quiet panic of realizing you were now expected to become responsible — to slowly become an adult.
Panorama 