We are so accustomed to ordinary days that we fail to see how special they are.
Friday felt meh. I woke up, had breakfast, went to work, talked with the boys, attended First Friday Mass, took Ingrid out to dinner at Apero, and met a large orange cat at the Corinthian Hills clubhouse.
Nothing extraordinary happened.
What struck me later was that this day would have been unimaginable to a younger version of myself. There was a time when I wanted meaningful work, financial stability, and someone to share dinner with. Somehow, after years of effort and a fair amount of good fortune, many of those hopes became ordinary.
That may be the problem. Once a blessing becomes familiar, we stop seeing it as a blessing and start treating it as a baseline.
Psalm 118:24 says, “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” It does not say to rejoice on exciting days, successful days, or memorable days. It simply says, “this day.” This means, that in all circumstances, we need to be grateful.
Most days are not dramatic. They are made up of work, meals, conversations, errands, and routines. We keep waiting for something noteworthy to happen, while missing the fact that an uneventful day is often a sign that many things are already going right.
Iuri had just returned from a month-long training camp overseas. The next day, he played against someone he had never beaten before — a player who can smell annoyance and use lobs, awkward pace, and irritation to exacerbate the annoyance. That is tennis, it is not cheating.
The match was tight. It went to a tiebreak.
On all four match points, the ball bounced badly in favor of his opponent. Four times. Iuri lost the tiebreak not because he lacked the strokes, but because frustration got to him first.
Competitive tennis is a mental game. At that level, everyone can play. Matches are often decided by how quickly a player recovers from a bad point. One bad bounce can hijack the mind. Players begin rushing. Errors multiply. By then the player has dug their own hole.
That is what makes tennis difficult. Not only the rallies, but the accumulation of emotion over the points. Professionals play matches lasting two, sometimes five hours. By then, the legs are tired, but so is the mind.
After losing the tiebreak came a short tantrum like an 8 year old child whos candy was snatched.
When he had settled down, I told him I never expected him to win every match after camp. Tennis is not boxing where opponents can be chosen carefully. In tennis, losses are unavoidable. I also told him that if he pressures himself, he will only get frustrated more.
Training teaches technique. Application teaches reality.
The camp improved his serve and forehand and all other techniques. You could see it in the match. He stayed in points longer. He competed better. But the mental side of the game cannot be downloaded in a month overseas. That only comes from experience — from accepting the misfortunes of the game like bad bounces, difficult opponents, heat, nerves, and losses that stay with you for a while.
The court does not adjust itself for one player. The bad bounce that hurts you today may save you tomorrow.
Mental toughness doesn’t not only come from physical strength, and from speed of mental recovery but also from accepting that not everything can go your way, that there are circumstances beyond your control. Only then you can focus back on your strategy. No, it is not denying the existence of emotions but knowing that it has to take on the sideline.
If only maturity could be accelerated for young athletes. But growth has its own pace. First comes knowing. Then applying. Then learning.
He remained quiet after the loss, but I noticed something had changed. Before, a defeat like this would ruin his whole day. This time, it only lasted an hour.
We had lunch in Goodah after.
By then, everything was already good-ah.
That afternoon he played again, he was tired but pushed himself. The day after, he played again and pushed himself despite being tired and carrying the mental effect of loss from yesterday
Today is the birthday of Padre Pio and I paid him a visit. We have a special devotion to him and so we named our son after him. I spent a few minutes to pray and receive the communion.
These days, I got to spend plenty of date time with another Francesco Pio, our eldest Jaime Francesco Pio. I had several meals with him, and even watched him climb. He is now 20 and as they get older, they live a more independent life, they spend more time with their friends and soon after graduation, their workmates.
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 