It was Kahlil who shattered my Monday morning zen from NYC. I got his message in Manila just before 5am, as I was unpacking my energies to start another action-packed week.

Noooo.

Nooooooo.

Barely an hour later I was first in the gym, opened Moro as usual before 6am. As the coaches and athletes trickled in it was all the mega chatter I could hear. I was determined to beat the frenzied hysteria and make as normal a Monday as I could. Focused, determined, methodical. There was always so much to pack into Mondays, more so that last Monday of the first month of a new decade, already a record-breaking month in the office.

By the time I did get to the office past 130pm and convened our Monday all-hands, I knew what I had to do. The voice had grown loud and clear even as I obliterated my deskwork to-do list throughout the morning. I remember sneaking a quick huddle with the CRM team even as the rest of our R&D session was looking on, waiting for me to start. Sure, we had to greenlight key upgrades for a CRM release in 24 hours, but I knew I was also buying myself time.

Finally I started our Monday all-hands without a word, walking to the board and scribbling those 8 letters we all knew by heart.

GPS MCII T

I called on the youngest member of our team (i.e., the most recent to join) to sound off what the 8 stood for.

Genius
Purpose
Service
Mission
Collaboration
Innovation
Impact
Transcendence

8 words that represented what we called the throughput, or lifelong journey, of every human being if we are to live our deepest truth and so fulfill our highest potential.

8 words that signaled precisely how we will serve every person, team, and organization we touch.

8 words that codified the most powerful mission statement I have ever known brought to life by a team.

8 words that I then scratched off the board as I declared to everyone’s bewilderment…

Today we can spell our mission: K-O-B-E.

That’s who Kobe Bryant was. Even a lifelong Boston Celtic diehard who has no love for anything LA could respect that. Not just respect; I had to celebrate and honor what he stood for. Kobe Bryant fully personified our Ignite mission and brought it to life by living it fully in his life.

Live your deepest truth and so fulfill your greatest promise. Kobe lived life as all of us should. It is up to us who are still here to do the same.

2008, Papa and I were sitting knee to knee to knee with Prof Christensen, the 3 of us in his Harvard office chatting Schumpeter, bringing Disruptor’s Dilemma to Manila, and being a good human being. The man lingered on me, I could not get over how big he was – in his 6 foot 8 suit, in his brainpower, and in the immemsity of his simple good heart. Truly a giant of a man. Rest well, Clay. And for the rest of us, read and apply this case study of how to live to the last sentence.

What a sublime contrast in today’s readings.

How awesome David is. His star is on the rise, and he has the golden chance now to slay his arch-nemesis, the King Saul who is raving mad with jealousy and wants to murder the hero David who is about to become king in Saul’s place. With his sword and squadron at the head of the sleeping enemy, David opts to forgive Saul instead and spare the tyrant’s life. David is my proto-man: just, wise, noble, a poet, philosopher and romantic, a man of the outdoors, strong, brave, beautiful, true, the chosen one, heroic and blessed in every way.

Meanwhile, in the Gospel, Jesus commissions his 12 apostles. Here is a very different king. He has none of the flourish and trappings of my idol King David. None. No one would mistake Jesus for a shooting star, much less king of anything. He is a carpenter’s son, roaming humble towns on foot, associating himself with all manner of the sick and society’s rejects, the lame, the blind, the deaf, lepers and losers and outcasts and sinners, the dead or might as well be dead.

And here he is recruiting his 12 apostles. Unremarkable would be a charitable way of describing the lot. More frank would be to call them simpletons, the opposite of wise, men so dense and lacking in character all but one of them ran in fear and abandoned Jesus in his passion and death; and they were to the man clueless to recognize their master in his resurrection when he was for hours and days among them. And one of the 12 outright betrayed him with a kiss.

It looked every bit like Jesus had recruited himself the most hapless and hopeless bunch of losers a king ever could assemble in his court. Yet, we all know how miraculously far each one of them would go in carrying on and giving their life and death for their Master’s mission. Christianity reaches us to this day, 2017 years hence, shaping billions of lives for better and for worse and the course of history forever.

So here was David, the perfect man, who slew Goliath. But Jesus slew an even bigger beast, the biggest known to man. He slew the giant in the hearts and souls of his apostles – and who can deny this same beast in of all of us? The one that says I can’t, I’m too weak, too broken, too meaningless, too lost, too far gone, too not worth it.

Jesus slew death and he did it, not with David-esque majesty, but with the slingshot of Love, a Love that felled the beast inside when he said to his apostles, and says still to all of us everyday: it is ok, you are ok. I love you anyway. I love you despite all of that. I love you because of all of that. I love you period. I loved you from the beginning and I will love you to the end.

Ultimately, David himself would have to bow to the same Love. He wept, a broken king, destroyed by the guilt of his lust and the limitless sense of power that entitled him to it. David would rise again on no other strength than love and forgiveness. And on David’s line would rise ultimately the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Only Love.

For those who stayed for yesterday’s Ignite Fireside, one of the things I shared was how my Jesuit director told me, I suppose with a little exasperation from all my Type A life:

“Andre, ask for the grace to see Him as He so tenderly sees you”. Mushy advise for this macho man, but I accepted it.

That was Monday.

This morning, I was alone in my usual sunlit corner after Mass, happily descending into that quiet empty familiar space of conversation – when someone tapped me from the back. Rather jolted, I turned around. There was this 90 something year old man on a cane. He gave me a smile, took both my hands in his, then gave me the most tender hug. The man was Onofre Pagsanghan, Pagsi, as he is tenderly known to generations of Ateneans he has taught in the past – the best – 70* years of his life. This living legend walks over to me on his cane and for no reason known to man and no reason that I deserve gives me the tenderness I was told to seek.

Thank you. I am numb and all I can feel is thank you.

*We had another encounter the day after, after Mass again. I shared the backstory. Without batting an eyelash he smiled and started rambling on the Little Drummer Boy: “I played my drums for him pa ra papampum… I played my best for him pa ra papampum… then he smiled at me…” He stopped there and I understood. I also stand corrected. He is 65 years teaching, going on 66. If we’re lucky I will be right someday with 70…

AMDG

Cape Town, Day 10, South Africa. It is the morning of New Year’s eve, last day of 2017. Renee and I wake late and get into a different kind of breakfast in bed.

Me: So, hon, what is your wish for 2018?

Renee (thinking)…

Me: On second thought, let me take that back. Instead, what are you most thankful for in 2017…

And so we take turns: one blessing at a time; at times building on each other’s shared thank yous; at others, reveling in (and revealing) our own personal beatitudes. It was a tender and filling experience – so we extended it later involving the rest of the family over New Year’s Eve dinner.

Here’s my list, which I offer again in today’s Mass, on the most beautiful feast of the Magi and the Epiphany.

1. FOR every one of the thousands of steps we took with every one of our group of 21 in our Camino de Santiago.

2. FOR the 4 outdoor showers, 2 sunrises, 2 sunsets, 2 happy hours, 2 game drives and every moment of our African Safari, our journey into the cradle of life.

3. FOR our epic descent into the American South, retracing a roadtrip from my childhood 25 years back, seeing old friends Charleston and Savannah still decadently charming as I remember them, for snakes and bears in Asheville, for bourbon and rye, and the King Elvis and the Greatest Ali.

4. FOR 8 days half-naked painting love with BFFs in El Nido.

5. FOR this Ateneo Championship – for winning it the right way, with homegrown values and so many homegrown players guided by a coaching staff and culture that were a stark contrast to the mean green mayhem machine we took down. And it looks like we’ve only just begun.

6. And on that note – for the reawakening of the Ateneo 6th Man and the promise of Blue Eagle the King for seasons to come.

7. FOR Renee’s Clarity ?. (look it up among pics)

8. FOR the chance and call to build something again from scratch – from absolutely ground zero. In truth, I am always building; it is my DNA. But the exhileration and pain are magnified when it is a wholesale build – new company, new business, new model, new marketspace, new problem-solutions, new platform, new partners, new team, new vision – while still and all grounded in the same mission and purpose whose flame just keeps growing.

9. Which also means – FOR teams who’ve grown up and outgrown their need of me. For people we picked (and who picked us) and groomed and nurtured who have come into their own and can now fire me from my old roles that they can now do better and with more singular focus, allowing me therefore – all of us, actually – to move on, take new challenges, learn new things, build new products, grow new confidences, expand/magnify/deepen our impact…

10. FOR this Manifesto and what it has meant to me this year:

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

11. FOR encountering Genius in a new way, as Martha Graham embodies it here, and as Steve Jobs must have meant when he said “while others see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. (see #10):

“The greatest thing [Graham] ever said to me was in 1943 after the opening of Oklahoma!, when I suddenly had unexpected, flamboyant success for a work I thought was only fairly good, after years of neglect for work I thought was fine. I was bewildered and worried that my entire scale of values was untrustworthy. I talked to Martha. I remember the conversation well. It was in a Schrafft’s restaurant over a soda. I confessed that I had a burning desire to be excellent, but no faith that I could be. Martha said to me, very quietly: “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open… No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

12. FOR continued good health and learning to do more with less stress. For deeply breathing. For fitness, daily workouts and Intermittent Fasting. Yes, for IF!

13. FOR our dear ates and kuyas who make it possible for each of us to fly.

14. FOR everytime our boys are together, just being brothers.

15. FOR the ongoing madness, 20 some years now, of loving Renee. Yet I do. Everyday I do.

16. FOR Ignatius and your Jesuits and all you have meant to me all my life, but especially for the sword you gave me in 2017.

17. FOR daily morning Mass and Holy Communion and the same 3 prayers you have placed in my heart. For this sweetness, my true home and most cherished time and place on earth.

18. FOR your call to be husband, father, son, brother, boss, colleague, friend – for the circle of people you have brought into my life and called me to serve, and for all who have brought your Love to me.

19. FOR continuing to be led in all of the above, in all ways, but especially this year in recognizing my own darkness, my own tragic flaws that prevent me from being a more faithful servant and witness of Love.

20. FOR 2018 here and now…

FOR AMDG.

There is something writ large here – ’tis in the stars, too brilliant to ignore, too beautiful to deny.

On the last day of 2017 we reached the Cape of Good Hope (Southern-most Africa) on the same year we reached Finistere (Western-most Europe) on the eve of my birthday.

At one point in history and for all lifetimes until then, these two “mosts” weren’t just the earth’s extremes: they were hard boundaries defining the end of the world for entire populations and truths.

The End: when the earth was flat, no human being was supposed to go beyond Finistere (literally the end of the earth) or the Cape of Good Hope.

But wait, there’s more.

2017 was also the year we made it deep into the American South, an epic roadtrip that traced the twin Civils – the War and the Rights Movement, a singular pair of historical markers a century apart, that once and twice upon a time also drew (and redrew) the hard lines where men, women and children could not enter, holding these, again, as bloody gospel truth that bound entire populations.

Today we know better than to respect these silly limits. Today we continuously push and redraw boundaries we never knew existed. Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, the beat goes on and on. None of these icons existed as companies, products, categories or even figments of imagination for most of my lifetime, yet today these are the biggest and most valuable entities on planet earth. Today we count innovation mostly only of the disruptive sort – and in months, not years. Today the question is not if, but when in the next 12 months the next new new thing will emerge that will shape and reshape billions of lives daily. Today we live in the center of the eye of the Age of Innovation.

Yet today one thing remains at the heart of all these boundaries we break, that makes these constant human frontiers possible. Today still we are doing all of it – we are advancing the entire human race – on the strengths and daring of a few handfulls of individuals.

And this is the point that brings me to the stars writ large.

For 2017 was also the year I drew heavily and found common zeal with Steve Jobs’ iconic manifesto challenging all of us to Think Different, offering up in 60 seconds 18 iconic human beings, all from the 20th century, who changed the world because they did: think different. It is one of the world’s most precise admonitions for why and how, out of billions, only a select few lead humanity to break boundaries and move the human race forward.

Here, indeed, is to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs on the square holes, the ones who are willing to see and try and fail and succeed differently – because the ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

And so it was in this same crazy spirit that in 2017 I heard the call, seemingly out of nowhere, to build something new, all new – for, with and all about these crazy ones. Yet as I look back, it feels like all my life has led and prepared me for it. It is so quintessentially me, yet none of it is mine. All of it, right down to the name, was given me.

IGNITE.

And so in 2017, I was privileged to surround myself, finally, with more and more of these crazy ones. It was an exhilerating sort of accelerating critical mass. I had always yearned crazy, sought crazy, and now I could touch crazy, and they me. In Ignite, we come together in an environment where we can methodically find and be found by kindred crazies, and together methodically find ways of collaborating – of advancing, not careers or family interests, but shared mission and impact. Crazy.

There is a most telling phrase in Steve Jobs’ Think Different that I left out: “While the rest of the world may see them as crazy, we see genius”.

And so in 2018, as I look forward to breaking more boundaries and pushing more limits, I feel so much closer to the truth about Genius, Innovation and Transcendence. There is a necessary link and progression that drives the three and makes them, not just possible but eminently doable – and not just for a select few, but for all of us:

The more you push new ground and break boundaries, the more it must all come from a force deep within. And yet the deeper within it comes, the more you realize you cannot call this force your own. You think you are pointing and leading the way, but in truth you are led by something far bigger than you – so much more immense than I that it is at once not from me and yet the very essence of me. And so you follow, and you follow, and you follow, always with truth and authenticity, and that is how you come, in your own crazy way, to be a force that is You alone, that thus thinks different, that thus breaks boundaries and forges new ground, that thus advances all of us.

There is a necessary progression: from Genius, to Purpose, to shared Mission, and thus to its fulfillment in Innovation and Collaboration. This is where the great divide is that have mired too many for too long – but not the crazy ones. The world is not wanting in Genius. What we lack is honesty, authenticity, sincerity, courage, humility, faith, hope, love – what we lack is the craziness to live by these truths. Not Genius. We have all been gifted with Genius, each our own – but only the fully honest and crazy ones will discover and embrace theirs and against all comfort, conformity, and the mediocrity of the world’s lures, jealousies and distractions, pursue their Genius and Purpose and fulfill their greatest potential through Mission, Innovation and Collaboration.

With clarity we march on. There is something writ large here – ’tis in the stars, too brilliant to ignore, too beautiful to deny.

Here’s to 2018 and beyond, the crazies are a-coming!

Steve Jobs on Crazy: https://youtu.be/YBJAvi3A0H8

Not a parable. It happened, Jesus saw it, and he invites us now to see the depths of our own widow’s mite.

He looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. He said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.”

She put in all she had to live on.

Another way to see it: the widow gave out of the very best she was given. To the world, two small copper coins might have looked too small, perhaps even negligible, an embarassment. But to her, and between her and God, it was all and the very best she was given. And from that she wholly gave.

For from where else could she have given?

Imagine if she had cowered in self-pity instead, comparing and desiring her rich neighbors’ bounty over her own, retreating in jealousy and bitterness – denying, doubting, fearing and ultimately rejecting her own gifts.

Am I not guilty of the exact same with my own gifts? What is it that prevents us from giving fully from the very best we have been given?

For from where else can we give?

As these whispers go, this morning’s sounds again like the continuous thread woven from the same tapestry that has been unfolding before me all these months. Last week: that my Genius (for that is what our gifts are) is the Love in the whole wide world and in all time I alone can fill.

My Genius is my Widow’s Mite. It takes humility and gratitude and love.

And Ignatius in his Suscipe: Take and receive… all I have is from You… Yours was the gift… to You I give everything back.

AMDG.

It’s Trump, you say, or Duterte, or Kim, or religious extremism, or – I don’t think so. I think it is simpler. The problem is you and I.

“You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have (accumulated) to whom will they belong? So it will be for the one who stores up treasure but is not rich in what matters…”

So easy to waltz through this oft quoted passage as yet another warning vs materialism and greed; which it is. But this morning, I’m hearing this parable speak of something much deeper, much more perverse and sinister. Perhaps the root of all evil and what’s wrong with the world that we cannot blame on Trump et al, because we’re all guilty here.

The story begins:

“There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest. He asked himself ‘what shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?…I shall build larger ones and there I will store all my grain and other goods…(and I shall) eat, drink and be merry…”

Right there – right there is the root of it all. No love, no compassion. The rich man had an overflow of abundance. But instead of looking to share with others, all he thinks is to accumulate and hoard it all for himself. We have built perverse societal norms where success, happiness and peace of mind are derived from how much I have accumulated for myself. Always me, me, me (and my family).

Never mind the needs of people who surround me, whose pains and hungers I am so abundantly graced to heal and fill. Like the rich man, instead of doing the right and kind thing, which is to give and share out of our abundance, we hoard it all for ourselves!

Strangely enough all this selfishness merely digs a deeper and deeper lack of appreciation of our own gifts and the innate abundance and sheer mad beauty we have each been blessed with. Ultimately, greed dis-graces our own Self first and foremost. Refusing compassion for others, we rob ourselves of the true beauty and purpose of our gifts, which is transcendent. What a tragedy that we accumulate our way to death instead of sharing and giving our way through life.

I’m not talking about charity work; I’m talking about nothing less than living each day with the desire to give and share out of the fullness of our gifts. This is the purpose and meaning of all life.

So that’s how the story ends:

“You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have (accumulated) to whom will they belong? So it will be for the one who stores up treasure but is not rich in what matters to God.”

What is this that matters to God that the rich man so clearly rejects?

That we Love. That we give out of all the abundance we have been given. That we wake each day with the desire to share fully of ourselves.

Forget Trump, forget Republicans, Democrats, tyrrants, dogma, religion and all the other confusing divisive stuff.

We need no one and nothing more than ourselves and our gifts to walk each day with the desire to love, share and give.

AMDG.

Say a prayer for Wash SyCip. By far the greatest Filipino I have personally met. We sat down 2x this year, one on one. He gave me 90 minutes of his time last Holy Wednesday, allowing me to speak for 45 minutes uninterrupted (which terrified me). Then he responded with the sort of wisdom that took me a few days – a few days!!! – to process.

When I realized what a gem he had given I asked to meet again because I needed more. Again he gave me 90 minutes of his undivided attention – and the most wisdom I have ever received in a No.

Excerpts of what I wrote of Wash in 2015:

At last, after all these years I met someone I can give my highest accolade to: that I would want to work for him.

I am an incorrigible entrepreneur, so used to blazing my own path. If there is not a single bone in me that could march to somebody else’s beat, it is simply because I have never met anyone whose strength of character is equalled by both uncommon intelligence and uncommon capacity to be inflamed by mission. Here is the man.

He built Asia’s pre-eminent audit and management services firm equal to the world’s best, then expanded it as a platform for growth, innovation, vision and service to an entire nation, always balancing it with a regional and global cause that was seared to his humanity. He grew and innovated not for the sake of growth or innovation (as so many misguided souls do), but by building from strength to strength and keeping an honest eye and ear to genuine needs sprouting all around him. He was Asia’s visionary, statesman, ambassador long before the world had any hint of the coming and now incumbent Pacific century. And he was to the global manor born, his heart and mind so instictively attuned to the greater context and bigger picture.

To me though, his summa cum laude is that all along the way he brought so many others along – not just that he treated tens of thousand of employees so well but that he did not descend into parochial feudal benevolence that always cycled back to his patronage or to him being boss (as so many misguided souls do). No, this was a man who made so many others legendary leaders in their own right, and then when country and universe demanded it, he let them go, free to serve a cause beyond his. How many of our best and brightest technocrats who went on to serve in government and business in the last 50 years came from SGV. And how many tens of thousands more rose up through AIM.

Thank you, sir. Rest well and enjoy the heavenly embrace. I know you will continue to keep our country and people in your big big heart, now eternal.

It happened on the eve of my 45th birthday.

This was the moment my Camino crossed from epic to sublime – in that dark corner, by myself, in 20 stolen minutes before our final rendezvous, before we had to say goodbye to our pilgrim’s ultimate destination of Santiago de Compostela as the sun set on our final day of the Camino.

We were blessed with a spectacular journey of a lifetime – so many scenes, moments, people, memories we will cherish…

…When we arrived in Compostela all together, 21 of us hugging, some collapsing to the ground in an unabashed pile of joy and tears;

…when we gathered for the Pilgrim’s Mass the day after and they swung the great botofumario in its larger than life pendulum, incense blessing our burnt out bodies at 75 kph cathedral-high above our heads;

…when the mythical Galician clouds parted just in time to reveal the most picture-perfect sunset at the end of the world;

…when we first set out 9 days prior in the glorious sunshine of Sarria’s fields of gold, the promise of a walk of a lifetime fully ahead of us;

…when we toasted each other over that last supper, the last of 20-some galactic meals we shared;

…when we look back at what we made possible for each other, all we had to overcome, each in our own way;

– for me most personally, to see my parents, my brother, my wife, my 9 year old son overcome and embrace every step of those 118 walking kilometers.

But of all this Camino’s spectacular moments, this is the one that broke me. I do not even know the name of this place – only that I found it because I so desperately wanted a quiet place of solitude in the great cathedral of Santiago. The day’s last pilgrim Mass was still at its peak and the main chapel of the Blessed Sacrament was already closed. I had traversed the cathedral’s full perimeter, I felt my time running out, I was resigned when I found this place on the farthest Western corner facing the great altar behind which lay the relic and tomb of St. James. It was one of the humblest and most unassuming of the countless churches and chapels we encountered all along the Camino. So unspectacular I was the only one there. So unspectacular there was only one light that shone on its cold dark bare stone walls.

It was this light that spoke to me. The same light that was in every one of the churches and chapels we had visited in the Camino, a familiar tender light revealing a new illumination. It is the one light in all the universe that waits so patiently and burns so fervently, wanting nothing more than to be brought out of the walls and edifices of religion – to be brought out into the world to light, to warm its darkest coldest corners. A light that has no use for pieties, devotions and dogma, a light that simply wants to find its presence in my life – in the way I live and love and share and forgive and treat people with truth and kindness, starting with myself. It is a light too many mistake to be religion or to reside mainly in churches and devotions when in truth it is a light that resides above all in the deepest truest self that waits and burns in each and every one of us. If only we give this light in our selves time and space, we would find God in the world, not in empty churches. We are temples of Love, and in our deepest soul there is in each of us this light that wants to set the world on fire.

Thank you for a most blessed Camino.

AMDG.

So on the 5th day, somewhere on KM 75, I could finally walk my Camino alone. A glorious, solitary stretch of 7 or so kilometers that was like coming home: a reminder how singularly important solitude is to me, everyday to be alone and zero out the noise and haste and just be with me. To hear one’s self is to hear God.

So alone, our conversation then gravitated rather quickly to the mission I’ve been entrusted with: to help others live purposeful lives of nothing less than transcendence.

“To do what we were born to do in the company of others who are doing what they were born to do”, as our IGNITE mantra goes.

It is a mission focused on founders in the business context – and particularly in a venture capital context – yet it is a mission every bit as resonant and fundamentally in accord with my desires for and interactions with family and friends. It is all I ask of my sons and all I ask of myself in bringing them up as a father.

“If the founders of religions came back today, would they recognize their work?”, read one of the posters in a long wall of points to ponder.

Still and always gathering my thoughts as these conversations go, but the sweet consolation, as Ignatius puts it, was very much felt.

So onto Day 6, the penultimate day to our final destination of Santiago de Compostella. I don’t want this Camino to end, but as all good things must, I carry again today all your intentions, and in a special way, I carry the Greatness I know is in each and every one of you.

So keep whispering to the wind. These country roads will take your prayers home and I will find them and carry them in today’s walk.

Day 4. We’ve breached Km 65. The rains came, and the killer hills soon after. It’s neither as difficult nor as easy as they say. Except the Estrella Galicia; it’s always the same ice cold good at the end of each day’s walk.

Walking this much, some things become undeniably clear. Like why do the world’s expectations count when you are the one taking every step, when every here and now is yours to savor or to lose before you can share it for the greater good of others? When the journey is this good I really don’t mind not getting to the destination. Santiago de Compostella can wait. The Camino is now.

By now we have walked 50 kms in 3 days, avoided rain, heat, blisters or any encounter with the proverbial wall. I have walked every one of these steps in love, many with Renee’s hand in mine and Cyril’s voice – his poetry and song, his rap and banter and endless stories, his joy and idealism bathing me and showering me with lessons I am eager to learn; the genius and honesty of a 9 year old. We miss Kahlil and will do this again someday all together.

Day 4 beckons. We are told it will be brutal, the hardest stretch so far. Rain is in the forecast. We will walk in grace and gratitude no matter what and we carry your prayers every step.

What will you find on the way to Santiago?

Today wisdom from a 9 year old, the youngest pelegrino (pilgrim) we’ve seen by far. Overheard somewhere on Km 20 of the Spanish Camino, when a charming new friend asked what advise he would give to adults.

“Be like children. Don’t worry too much.”

And so we were, and so we did.

What is your sword?

Knight, nobleman and soldier that he was, his sword represented all that was good and dear to Iñigo of the Basque family of Loyola in the 1500s. The sword was his past, present and all the future ever held.

And that is why when a French cannonball finally broke Iñigo and he realized, far from being over, all his life (incredibly!) had led him now to serve the noblest of kings, he wholeheartedly offered his sword in kneeling allegience: pledging his very best, all that was good and dear to him to always and in everything from then on seek only the greater glory of his Lord and Master.

Only your Grace, your Love on me bestow; these make me rich, all else will I forgo.

And that is why almost 500 years after his death, Ignatius of Loyola remains one of the most influential men who ever walked the earth. Sinner (first and foremost by his own admission), Saint, Founder, Father, Teacher and Spiritual Director to countless millions through his classic and eternal Spiritual Exercices, Ignatius and his Compaña de Jesus (better known as the Jesuits) have endured the test of time and remain as relevant today in the age of Facebook as in the days of the conquistador. The Jesuits run the best schools in every corner of the world, educating generations of leaders and forming millions of souls in ratio studiorum, mens sana in corpore sano, Magis and AMDG – Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam. Pope Francis is a Jesuit, and if his boundless spirit and willingness to embrace all is a fresh and welcome whiff of religion (dogma be damned), it is because Pope Francis exemplifies the very best of Ignacio de Loyola’s own, his willingness to be led in everything, to find God in all things, God in all people, God in all our gifts.

Personally for me, there is no man or woman alive or dead who has brought me closer to Jesus and Mary than this man Ignatius, and he does it every day, wielding his sword to prune and kick this stubborn heart of mine.

And that is why on his 9th birthday, I gave this painting to my son, after he had professed Ignatius to be his biggest hero (second to Jesus Christ and ahead of Jose Rizal). It is the classic portrait of a kneeling Ignatius with arms outstretched – but where is his sword?

That’s the question I want my son to ask and know for himself of himself. What is your sword? What is best and dearest in you? What is the essence of your life’s gift, which is the essence of why you are here on earth, the purpose for which you were born, a gift freely given and a gift in turn that will be asked of you to give fully for the service of humanity and God’s greater glory.

Ignatius says it best in his Suscipe:

Take and receive my liberty.
Take all my will, my mind, my memory.
All things I hold, all I own are yours.
Yours was the gift, to you I all return.

Do what you will – command, and I obey.
Only your Grace, your Love on me bestow.
These make me rich,
All else will I forgo.

Happy feast day, San Ignacio! And thank you for your sword!

***

What Is Your Sword?
Acrylic on Canvass
Yeyey Yatco, 2017

The first scene that greets Cyril every morning and the last he sees every night.

Another whisper. It’s only gotten louder since I first heard it maybe December of last year, until nowadays it is a daily talk point.

That our gifts bear our life’s mission; and that our gifts include, as much as our talents and joys, our pains.

And today, I had a further illumination: Why Pain?

Edward Munch’s The Scream. (so I might have entitled this, for the 80s peeps out there, Whisper to a Scream)

Today’s gospel was the calling of Matthew, the tax collector, and the greater thread of Jesus hanging out with sinners, thereby pissing off the holier than thous.

The story ends with the Lord’s parting shot: “Go and learn the meaning of the words, I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”

Mercy is a gift. It is freely given to us that we may freely give it to others. But compassion is a gift we can only give if we ourselves know pain. The Latin etimology makes this clearer: com passion, to suffer with others.

So where is our gift? Where can we live compassion? Whose pain are we particularly gifted to heal?

Very much the central question of each life, and in a special way, of founders, because of the mercies, the compassion, the healing they can startup and enable for so many.

A special thread we will examine in Founder Circle 3 and Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey: discerning God’s tapestry of gifts and pains and healing woven especially for each one of us, pointing out whose pain we are partcularly gifted to heal, pointing out our life’s mission and purpose.

Is this the focal point and organizing principle of every founder’s journey?

The Discerment of Gifts? 

Today’s reading was Abraham willing to sacrifice his only son, Isaac.

A man willing to give back the greatest gift given him, and in so doing he realized, far beyond his wildest imagination and ambition, the greatest extent and transcendent power of that gift.

So it is with each one of us, and particularly poignant for founders.

Because your gifts have exponential impact as inumerable as the stars. Like Abraham.

Excited to announce Founders Circle 3, where we will channel a whole lot of Joseph Campbell and the Hero’s Journey. Star Wars meets Iron Man meets San Ignacio de Loyola meets founders and unicorns ca 2017. Invites coming soon. Mark your calendar: Saturday, 05 August 2017.

This is why I started Ignite Founders. To find these 9 points Jessica articulates that almost fully capture (with one key ommission) the difference between what I want to invest my life on and what I don’t.

I have zero interest in entrepreneurs; I want founders.

And this is what I wrote to one of our founders just now:

I believe in you, [name of founder]. You are not the complete package (nobody is) but you are gifted with elusive pixie dust: like being fanatic about something that you clearly embrace as your life’s work; and it happens to be so basic and something the world so badly needs that lots of people are willing to pay lots of money for it (if positioned correctly); and you have rare imagination (not just intelligence) and that innovator gene (not just textbook management that we can actually hire) and the character of a romantic (not just XL models) to GO FOR IT, to go all out and make your crazy dream come true.

I’ve just basically semi-coloned the 9 things in this article that accurately describe you, YOU!!! Whatever skillset you lack we can surround you with. But this magic pixie dust is rare and you have been blessed with it. This is why I care about [name of venture] so much. You are a rare catch.

 

---

Your gift is your melody. It is yours alone and the world longs to be filled by it.

Few of us can sing or write music. But all of us know the power of song and can appreciate this truth about them:

The melodies that fill our hearts and lift our spirits are not written or sung from skill and talent alone; our greatest songs are born and take every breath from a mix of joy and pain, of what fills and what cries out in emptiness.

And all of that comes from the artist.

So it is with our gifts: they are melodies we alone can fill and write and sing, and they are born and take every breath from our skills and talents, yes, but also from the treasures of our joys as of our pains, of our fulfillments as of our longings.

And all of that comes from who?

To find God in all things: is to find the melody of our gifts in all that life gives us; in our talents and skills as much as in our passions; in what fills us and what we long for; in our failures and in our pains. There is our Gift, our melody, the embrace of Grace, the call to give and share it all for a better world. It is true for singers and songwriters as it for all of us.

Today I carry in my heart the gifts and melodies of all of you. May we build a world of peace by filling the people we encounter with the gifts and melodies that are ours alone.

A discernment whispered from this morning’s Mass hymn:

Ang himig mo
Ang awit ko.
Lahat ng ito’y nagmula sa Iyo
Buong puso kong inaalay sa Yo

O Diyos, O Panginoon
Lahat ng biyaya’y aming inampon.
Aming buhay at kakayahan
Ito’y para lamang sa iyong kaluwalhatian.

For my friends who need it, an English translation:

Your melody is my song,
It all comes from you.
I offer it back to you with all my heart.

O Lord, all my gifts you have freely given.
All my life and all my blessings (for what are they but solely for your ongoing work of Creation, of Peace, of Love).

AMDG.

Reflections on Slavery Ca. 2017: The Maddening Cruelty and Missed Opportunities of an Indifferent Life.

Indifference ends when we get to know that slice of humanity whose pain we are particularly gifted to solve.

This is my slice.

Exactly 5 Saturdays ago, a scant 24 hours before I left Manila for the summer’s big family vacation – a 27-day roadtrip that would take us to the heart of the American South – I hosted nearly 70 private equity investors, startup founders and professionals in an afternoon-long conversation about unicorns.

More precisely: the quest for the elusive Filipino unicorn, which I define as the first billion-dollar Filipino startup to impact humanity and matter on a global scale. Having authored the agenda, I clarified that this Filipino Unicorn wasn’t about blind ambition or valuation per se; it was fundamentally about Bigness: the capacity to think big and execute big, and why on earth haven’t we seen this mythical 1-2 punch among 100,000,000++ Filipinos? (Ok, so half our population is still milking ?).

As we exchanged views across plenary and breakout sessions in Ibiza Beach Club’s sprawling expanse all afternoon, and as we moved onto happy hour and dinner, dwindling down to the last hard core group that broke up near midnight, our talk got sharper and a key insight clarified and reiterated its nagging wisdom: if the Filipino unicorn has been elusive, it is because its founder has been elusive – and the societal values that would spawn and nurture such a founder even more and ever so elusive.

It was late so I left it at that. Cinderella got home past midnight. Even before that Saturday marathon session I was already at my mental and physical limits with the flurry of work that precedes extended travel. I forced myself up for my Sunday morning run, finally packed a month’s worth of suitcase (which finally appeased my wife), headed to the airport, and as I plopped down onto aisle seat 2D, surrendered myself to a month of total abandon to an entirely different world.

Or so I thought.

Our journey into the American South was invariably a journey into Slavery: a passive-aggressive 27-day descent into its complex layers; moral, ethical, social, political, above all, economic. In the end, my thoughts settled not on Slavery’s starker past, but its more hidden and no less insidious present and future.

Slavery persists, yes, in continued exploitation, but also and more horrendously so in the wanton and widespread indifference by People Who Have of People Who Have Not.

This is where the story of Slavery in the American South brought me back to characters and narratives more familiar in our current day. Human motivations and moral quandaries circa 2017. I thought about myself, my circles, what we’re doing with our lives, what we’re not doing with our gifts and privileged-ness. More than any others, my thoughts went back to Unicorns and the founders and VCs who build them; not so much for what we all do, but for all our omissions given what we each can do.

Look, the post-renaissance movement of Europeans into distant colonial lands surely did not lack the vision, courage, talent, resilience, perseverance and other master-of-the-universe qualities we associate with our heroes and empire builders of today. These were men (they were overwhelmingly male) who gave up everything to chase a dream in terra uber incognita. Many were themselves persecuted, marginalized men who had tasted, swallowed and spat the bitter end of abuse. And many were Christians, god-fearing men.

Yet none of that translated into decency, compassion or conscience to treat their fellow man better than they themselves had received; to say nothing of doing more given the stage was all set to rebuild a new, more prosperous, more just and kinder world. As they braved the ruthless Atlantic crossing and endured all the deadly maladies of the frontier lands of the new world, first in the Caribbean and then in the North American colonies, and as they survived and thrived and founded and built their cutting-edge market-making plantations and massive fortunes (their unicorns, inflation adjusted) they were willing to mind, quite literally, only their own business.

Never mind that the plantation business model demanded they compromise basic human kindness and then give it up entirely until they finally built and enacted an entire system and ecosystem that systemically unleashed cruelty on so many in order to advance the ambition of so few. Those were the qualities that marked these founders and financiers of that time and place, who legalized wholesale cruelty and insisted it was a god-given right – and duty!

Are we doing any better today? It is easy to conclude that we are. Slavery in numine no longer persists in much of the free world. Yet by our fruits we shall be known. When we look at the intensity and extent of violence in every corner of our free world today, I see underlying it all the bondage, bitterness and hopelessness that only cruelty can incite.

Cruelty today has a different face. Cruelty today might be many degrees less savage than colonial Slavery, but it is no less demeaning and destructive when so many human beings are deprived of a just and humane existence, when dignity and advancement are closed to so many. Cruelty today has a different face from Slavery, but it thrives on the same operating system: the abdication of kindness, decency, compassion and conscience when those of us who have been blessed with plenty refuse to do our part – because we are too busy pursuing ambition and greed, or because we are so enamored with facebook and the myriad infinite distractions, trifles, trivialities and waste that occupy our lives.

To boil it down to a word: Indifference.

Every one of us has a moral obligation to uplift others. I’m not talking about charity; not about our spare tires, but to live our lives on the strength of our very best gifts actively given up to serve others; not random others whose pains bear no real resonance to us, but to the people we encounter in our slice of humanity whose pains we are particularly gifted to solve.

Because therein lies our life’s purpose. Our gifts are oracles that tell us why we were born. For whom and for what pains do our gifts toll, there is our life’s purpose. The wings that allow each of us to soar also whisper to us who in this world we can gift with wings of their own and how. Our gift is our mission, our mission is our gift. To live anything less shackles our fellow man by keeping them shackled when we have the power to set them free. Indifference is not just indiffernce to others; it is indifference to our gifts, to the greatness we can sow and leave in this world.

And so indifference is also cruelty. Indifference is one person’s violence against another whom he or she has every ability to lift but does not. Indifference shackles peoples into hopeless chains. Hopeless chains spawn violence, terrorism. An eye for an eye, cruelty for cruelty when we lack kindness, decency, compassion, conscience.

Indifference is a timely wake up call that peace is not the absence of war, that peace can only be achieved in the fullness of Love: when people purposefully live kindness, compassion and conscience to uplift their slice of humanity. I don’t think this is touchy feely mumbo jumbo. I believe this is the key to world peace. Or if you want something perhaps more achievable: Love is the key to building honest-to-goodness billion-dollar ventures and mythical unicorns.

Not saying it’s the only key. But at least in my book, Love is the key I am passionate to work with. At Ignite Founders we are looking for founders who are willing and able to go boldly where no man or woman has gone – but they are also founders who, as they build their fortunes, will take as many people UP with them as they are able, together to build a better, faster, more comfortable, more entertaining, more connected, more efficient world but also a world that is more just and humane, where dignity and opportunity are open to all.

These are the types of founders we look for, that we are committed to investing in. Seeing this more clearly through the unexpected lens of tourist anthropology and a family vacation, I am brought back to that realization that dawned on me like a candle in the night that Saturday night in Ibiza 5 Saturdays ago. I cannot expect the current system of startup and venture capital to serve up these types of founders. We are going to have to seek them out and build them up. In business-speak, we need to backward integrate the value chain by creating a feeder system to find and nurture these types of founders who possess this kind of transcendent greatness.

This Kind of Transcendent Greatness. Lately when people ask what do you do? I reply that I’m in the business of Greatness. I’ve always talked about Greatness in the context and imagery of Maslow’s heirarchy: an individual, organization or society capable of self actualization and fulfilling their highest potential, which far transcends their own self esteem or the esteem of their peers. What kind of solutions architectures, combining media, content, data and technologies, can systematically drive Greatness in individuals, organizations and society? That’s my business. It spans investment, R&D, architecture and design, strategy, marketing, sales, distribution, operations, technology, human capital, culture, etc.

This Kind of Transcendent Greatness is not a continuum that one person or even a group can push another person to or through. Rather than a push, This Kind of Transcendent Greatness is a pull: an internal force so strong, once discovered and awakened to, the owner can no longer look back, no longer do anything short of heed its call and live its mission. That’s why the end of indifference is knowing that slice of humanity whose pain you are particularly gifted to solve. Imagine the most talented people and organizations you know waking up to This Transcendent Greatness and you can understand why I’m so passionate about this, and conversely why I’m so mad about indifference.

This Kind of Transcendent Greatness. This is our mission at Ignite Founders: to help really talented people shine the light on the Transcendent Greatness within them, so that once awakened, we can invest in them and together build ventures that will spread transcendent greatness in and through various marketspaces in educuation, career, professional and organizational develoment, healthcare, media and tech.

I enjoyed that trip. Happy to be home and so looking forward to battling indifference and igniting founders to that slice of humanity they are particularly gifted to solve.

Celebrating 20 years of growth, grace, madness, forgiveness, togetherness.

And today, incredibly, we have the same gospel that once upon a time graced our wedding.

Remember how it had us at hello? A most beautiful encounter with grace told some 2017 years ago that somehow perfectly foretold the folly and saving grace, again and again and again, of our married years ahead. “Come let us begin again and again and again”… Have we needed any more “for better and for worse” wisdom than John 21 all these years?

And now a story immortalized as the “sunrise of two hands”, in a scene so delicate and pregnant with meaning it could only be drawn by a dear friend. And wow, in metallic and copper!

Here’s to Andrenee, and to all the romance that lies ahead!

Come, Let Us Begin
Acrylic on Canvass
24″ x 36″
Yeyey Yatco, 2017
#yatcoart #wowmettalicart

For the unabridged Love Story: Love Letter. Or here it is in full below.