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.