Entry #1

Hey Andrew,

This is the first entry of what I hope turns into a long habit: writing down what I'm learning from books, from journals, from plain life, and leaving it here for you. I don't know yet how big (or small) this website will get. I just know it's better to start than to keep planning to start.

The first lesson is the reason I started this at all. Be humble. Not comparing yourself to others is just the easiest way it shows up.

I learned it the hard way, and I'd like you to skip the hard way.

Your Mama and I moved to Canada for quality of life, not quantity of it. Back in the Philippines we already had a good life. We traveled. We built things. We had more than enough. If anything, your Mama had more of it than I did. Still does, honestly.

We moved for you. We wanted you to grow up with options we didn't always have. So we leaned on family, worked hard, and made it here.

But here's what moving didn't do. It didn't erase where we came from. Yes, life got better for us in Canada. Just not so much better that it makes us any better than the people we love back home.

And this was the hard way: a person close to us likes to compare us to their own kids, over and over, almost every time we talk. I have nothing against those kids. I love them. I'm genuinely happy for the lives they've built, no envy at all. Truly. But the moment I say something kind about them, that person's eyes light up, and I feel the conversation turn into a contest I never asked to enter. I usually just go quiet.

I know that sounds prideful. It isn't, not exactly. It's my ego that gets bruised every time this person brings up people "still" in the Philippines and lines them up against the people here. And it doesn't fade between conversations. It's more like tinder. Every time we talk, something relights it.

I prayed about it for a while. Oh my boy, more than two years. I've joked with your Mama that this one dilemma alone filled pages of my journal. The answer I kept landing on wasn't about this person at all. It was about me. God was showing me a pattern so I wouldn't hand it down to you, so your Mama and I would never once measure you against other kids, or against anyone else.

That's the whole lesson, son. Be humble. We will not compare you to other kids, or to anyone else. Living in a first-world country doesn't make you a first-rate person, and living anywhere else doesn't make someone less of one. Paul told the Corinthians the same thing almost two thousand years earlier: "When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise" (2 Corinthians 10:12, NIV). I want you wiser than that from the start.

Your Mama and I pray, every day, that you grow up godly first. Smart, kind, capable, whatever else life calls for, sure. We want to give you the world. But none of it means much if you spend your life keeping score against people who were never your competition.

You don't have to compare yourself to anyone, Andrew, not even people you love. That's not weakness. That's humility. God loved you before you could do a single thing to earn it, and that's a better starting point than any comparison could ever give you.

I love you, my son. My Bing-Bong.

Love,

Papa