Let me ask you something honest. And I want you to really sit with it before you scroll down.
If everything you owned, everyone you loved, and everything you had built was taken from you by tomorrow morning, what would still be yours?
I have thought about this question a lot. Not from a book. Not from a classroom. I thought about it lying on a papag, covered in itchy red spots, running a fever, and unable to go anywhere.
The Papag That Became My Classroom
I was working in an office at the time. Sitting in front of a screen every day, doing what most of us do. And then one morning I woke up and I could not go anywhere. Chicken pox. One of the most contagious viral infections a person can catch as an adult.
Back home in Guimaras, my brother had built a papag attached to the side of our bahay kubo. If you are not familiar with that word, papag is a Hiligaynon term. It is a simple bamboo platform built on the side of a kubo where you can sit, lie down, or set things on. Think of it as a bench and a bed at the same time, made entirely from bamboo, open to everything around it. No walls to close you in. No door to shut. No window to look through because there was nothing blocking the outside in the first place.
The bahay kubo my brother built with his own hands was raised up on stilts above the ground. The walls were made of amakan, woven bamboo strips pressed flat and layered together in a pattern that lets the air pass through just enough. The roof was made of pinawod, dried palm leaves laid carefully on top of each other, steep and wide, the kind that keeps the rain out even when it pours hard. All around it were tall trees, thick tropical forest, the kind of green that feels like it is breathing alongside you. Sometimes smoke would rise slowly from below the kubo and drift up through the trees, and you could sit there and just watch it disappear into the leaves above.
It was quiet. Real quiet. The kind you only find when there is nothing around you but nature and the people who built something for you with their own two hands.
That papag, that simple bamboo platform on the side of that kubo, became the place where I had some of the most honest moments of my life. Just the open air around me, the sound of the forest, and me lying there with nowhere to be and nothing to do but feel everything.
For the first time in a long time, life forced me to stop.
No office. No screen. No routine to hide behind. Just me, the open air, and the quiet that comes when everything slows down without your permission.
That kind of quiet has a way of asking you questions you have been avoiding.
The People Who Showed Up Anyway
Here is what I did not expect. I thought being sick and isolated would feel lonely. But what happened next is something I still carry with me every single day.
My parents did not just check on me once. Every single day, my mom would prepare food that was soft and easy for me to eat. My dad made sure I had everything I needed. Medication. Comfort. Presence. They were not doing it to be heroes. They were doing it the way parents do things when they are quietly scared and refuse to show it. Small acts. Done every day. That is what love really looks like.
My siblings kept showing up too. Not making a big deal about it. Just being there. Knocking nearby, asking if I needed anything, staying close even when they could not come too close because of how contagious I was.
And then there was my girlfriend. She does not live in the same place as me. There is distance between us on a normal day. But when she found out how bad things had gotten, she did not just send a message and call it done. She traveled from her municipality all the way to where I was, cleaned the space around me, sat with me, and took care of me emotionally when my body had nothing left to give.
I do not think she realized how much that one trip changed something in me.
My friends handled it the only way real friends know how. They sent memes. They made fun of the spots on my face. They joked about my situation in that specific way your close friends do, the way that does not make you feel like a sick person but just like yourself. They kept me laughing when laughing was honestly the last thing I felt like doing.
And lying there on that open papag, with the wind coming through and no walls to close me in, I realized something that hit me harder than the fever itself.
I had been spending most of my time in front of a screen. Working. Building. Grinding away. And I was not really spending that time with them. But when I needed them, not one of them treated that like a reason to stay away. They showed up anyway.
The Feeling That Follows You Back to Work
Here is the funny thing about being forced to slow down. Once I got better and went back to the office, back to the screen, back to the emails and the meetings and the daily routine, something had changed.
Because now, on a normal Tuesday sitting at my desk, I would randomly remember my mom’s face handing food through the open side of the papag. I would think about my girlfriend making that long trip just to be beside me. I would remember my friends sending the most ridiculous memes at the perfect moment.
And right there, in the middle of a regular workday, I would feel at home.
Not because of the office. Not because of the work. But because those people were somewhere out there, living their lives, and they were mine. That thought alone was enough to make everything feel okay.
It is a strange gift that sickness gives you sometimes. It shows you what was always there but what you were too busy to notice.
What You Only See When Things Stop
Life has this strange sense of humor. It takes things away from you and in doing so, shows you what was never really yours to lose in the first place. And then it points quietly at what has been yours all along.
Getting chicken pox was not a good time. The itching. The fever. The isolation. Missing work. Feeling helpless on an open papag with the wind blowing through and nothing to do but wait. None of that was pleasant.
But I would not trade what I learned from it.
I learned that I was surrounded by people who would choose me even on the days I was not choosing them. Even when I was too caught up in work to really be present. Even when I was more focused on a screen than on a conversation.
And that changed how I show up now.
As time went on, I started meeting more people who added something real to my life. People who helped me grow emotionally, mentally, physically, financially, and spiritually. And I started to understand something simple but important.
The kind of person you are becoming is the kind of circle that stays around you.
You have a choice in that every single day. You can choose to be someone your circle will choose back. You can choose to be one of the reasons someone in your life wants to keep going.
That is not a small thing. That is actually one of the biggest things there is.
So What Is Still Yours?
If everything was taken by tomorrow morning, what would remain?
Not the job. Not the savings. Not the things you have built or the goals you have chased.
What would remain is the love you have given and the love that has been given back to you. The memory of a parent making sure you had something to eat. A girlfriend traveling across municipalities just to sit beside you. Friends sending memes when you needed to laugh more than you needed medicine.
Those things live inside you. And no fever, no loss, no hard season has ever been able to touch that.
I found that out on an open papag in Guimaras. No doors. No windows. Nowhere to hide from what actually mattered.
And now, even on the most ordinary workday, when I sit in front of my screen and let my mind drift for just a second, I think about them. And it feels like home.
Maybe that is what it means to really have something. Not owning it. Not holding it. Just carrying it with you, quietly, everywhere you go.
If this post made you think about someone, reach out to them today. Not tomorrow. Just today. You never know when showing up is exactly what someone needs.