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.
Weeks ago, our eldest son Jaime told me he had a bouldering competition at Flowstate Gym in Pampanga. That Saturday, I drove there with Ingrid and Jaime’s girlfriend. We left the house around 9:30 in the morning. Just before leaving, Jaime mentioned that he barely slept the night before. He had a stomach ache, felt feverish, and had taken paracetamol earlier that morning.
Traffic was light, typical of a Saturday. Before heading north, we stopped at the Petron Starbucks for coffee and a quick meal. As we were about to enter, I saw my cousin Jigs preparing for his shift after his break. The café was crowded and the line stretched long — exactly what one expects from a busy roadside Starbucks on a weekend.
After the quick stop, we made another side quest at Lakeshore so Jaime could buy medicine. By then it was already 11:40. Registration was at 12:20, and the venue was still around thirty minutes away. We got back on the road and arrived just in time. Jaime got off first while we searched for parking.
Inside the gym, the place was packed with climbers, friends, and families. In between competitions, organizers were busy fixing and cleaning the walls. There was even this little girl, less than 10 years old, who was helping dust the holds. A few minutes later, the elite category was called and competitors lined up before the opening problem. They looked like people lining up for the cashier as they hold their chalk bags and water bottles. When Jaime’s turn came, I took out my camera, looked for the best angle and started shooting.
He moved carefully from hold to hold until he reached the top. Some problems he completed cleanly, others he missed. There was one red route he attempted three times and failed three times. It was not necessarily beyond his ability — he had climbed harder problems before — but competition changes things. Excitement and anxiety enter the body together. Timing changes. Confidence changes. Rhythm changes.
He did not finish last. In fact, he probably could have climbed higher in the rankings had he trusted himself more. But it is difficult to fault someone competing while not feeling his best.
Bouldering culture itself was interesting to observe. Climbers greet each other with a thumb handshake. Instead of the usual “Let’s go!” or “Come on!”, people shouted “Alez!” and “Ganbare!” whenever someone was on the wall. The atmosphere felt less hostile than many competitive sports. Even opponents encouraged each other mid-climb.
The competition ended around 2:20 in the afternoon. Had Jaime advanced to the finals, we would have stayed longer. Instead, we drove to Tarlac to meet my cousins. It was a short one hour drive from Pampanga to Tarlac. I swear that it felt farther before.
We ate at a place called Trattoria Atrove, an Italian restaurant in Tarlac City. A statue of Venus de Milo greeted guests near the entrance. The place was dimly lit, with a bar and a billiard table tucked into one side of the restaurant. We waited a few minutes before my cousins arrived.
The pasta was surprisingly good — probably an 8.5 out of 10 — though the food was secondary to the conversations. We were there more for stories, laughter, updates, and the familiar rhythm that relatives fall back into no matter how much time has passed.
We left around 5:45 in the evening just as heavy rain began pouring over the highway. Thankfully, there was no flooding along NLEX or Skyway. We arrived back in San Juan around 8:20, still early enough before Shana’s 9 p.m. curfew, so we ended the night with a quick dessert and drink nearby.
It was one of those long days that never felt rushed. A competition in Pampanga, coffee stops, medicine runs, relatives in Tarlac, rain on the expressway, dessert before going home. There is nothing extraordinary on paper, yet somehow full when stitched together.
Albert Anker (1831–1910), The Village School in 1848 (1896), media not known, 104 × 175.5 cm, Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland. Wikimedia Commons.
I started my morning walk today at around 6:30am. Walking has slowly become part of my daily routine these past few weeks. There’s something about the quiet of the morning that allows you to think more clearly… or sometimes realize how unclear your mind actually is.
I brought with me the usual things: my phone, earbuds, and my rosary. I also have a small roster of podcasts I listen to during my walks, and this morning I tuned into a talk by Jeff Cavins about eating, exercising, and spiritual life.
But to be honest, I was barely paying attention at first.
As I walked, my mind kept wandering. I would replay random scenes in my head, look at shadows on the street, greet neighbors, talk to a cat along the way, and of course, avoid the occasional surprises left on the sidewalk.
It was only during the last few minutes of the podcast that I finally became still enough to really listen. And three ideas caught my attention.
First: knowledge must be trained into the body and the will.
Second: knowledge must become action, not remain as mere information.
And third: access to truth is not the same as transformation.
That last point stayed with me.
Many people fall into the trap of knowing but not doing. I fall into that trap myself. Sometimes knowledge becomes a kind of fortress. We convince ourselves that because we understand something intellectually, we have already lived it. But understanding is not the same as practice.
In fact, it is only when we seriously attempt to live out the truth that we realize how far we still are from becoming the kind of person that truth demands us to be.
I ended my walk with breakfast at Tropical Hut, but one thought stayed with me the entire morning:
The purpose of knowledge is not simply to make us more intelligent, but to move us toward action.
Because knowledge, after all, is measured not by how much we know, but by how much it changes the way we live.
Panorama 