I Should Not Have Succeeded
Growing up, my mother often reminded me that I wasn’t good at math. She said it casually, almost as a fact of nature, and I absorbed it the way children do—without argument. Math, after all, is supposed to teach you how to think clearly, how to reason your way through the world. And so, in some quiet corner of my mind, I learned to believe that many doors would remain closed to me.
In that sense, I have always felt like an anomaly in my own life. “Dili jud ko dapat mo succeed bai (I should not have succeeded, bro).” I told a friend once. By all the usual measures, I shouldn’t have. I don’t know how to build things with my hands, or solve elegant problems on a whiteboard. I’m not trained in healthcare, customer service, or project management. I don’t lead from the front. I hover in the background, unnoticed, doing work that rarely earns applause.
And yet—there is this one thing. I care deeply about my students’ welfare. Not as a skill you can quantify, not as something that fits neatly on a résumé, but as a way of paying attention. A way of showing up. A way of staying.
Perhaps that, too, is a kind of intelligence. One that doesn’t announce itself, doesn’t calculate or conquer, but quietly holds space for others. And perhaps life, in its mysterious generosity, makes room for those of us who were never meant to shine in obvious ways—but were meant, instead, to remain present.
~ Bai, Monday, February 16, 2026, NorCal