You can care deeply about something and still postpone it for years.
Not because it is impossible. Not because you have stopped wanting it. Sometimes life is simply comfortable enough that nothing forces you to begin.
I know this because it has happened to me more than once.
Many years ago, I wanted to become a professional speaker. I did not even know how to describe that ambition properly then. I only knew that I had seen people like Francis Kong and Bono Pagsanjan speaking before audiences, sharing ideas, and getting paid for doing it. Something in me said, I want to do that.
But wanting something and making it happen are very different things.
I always had a good reason to stay
I started my career as a teacher. In one high school, I was earning around ₱6,000 to ₱8,000 a month. After about three years, I moved to another school where I earned around ₱18,000, plus extra income from tutorial sessions.
Life had become better. I enjoyed teaching. I loved my students. And by my second year in that school, although I had already begun thinking seriously about other possibilities, I had no compelling reason to leave.
Then I read Les Brown’s It’s Not Over Until I Win.
That book showed me something of the life of a motivational speaker. It did not give me a neat roadmap for becoming one. If anything, it showed struggle, uncertainty, rejection, and wrong turns. Perhaps that made postponing easier because I could see how difficult the road might become.
Besides, every year I received another good reason to stay.
Students would say, “Sir, please stay one more year. My sister is coming next year. I want her to become your student too.”
I heard versions of that more than once. And every time, staying felt generous and reasonable. I was doing meaningful work. My students wanted me there. Why leave?
Looking back, I learned something uncomfortable from that period:
A good reason can eventually become an excuse.
There was nothing wrong with loving my students or enjoying teaching. But year after year, those good reasons allowed me to postpone something else I also said mattered.
If nothing had changed, perhaps I would have kept saying “one more year” for another five years. Maybe ten. I cannot know.
Something changed for me.
But not because I suddenly became courageous.
I got fired
The issue began with a conference on campus journalism.
One of our students had written what I considered an excellent piece about her experience with a Muslim exchange student. Spending time with that student had challenged assumptions she had heard about Muslims. She discovered that the picture she had been given—that Muslims were dangerous or somehow fundamentally different from us—was simply not true.
But we were in a Christian school, and the piece was not published.
During the conference, I asked one of the speakers a question about why students could not publish their work without always getting the school’s approval. I did not tell him the entire Muslim-student story. I simply asked the question.
The speaker explained that schools had responsibilities for what appeared in student publications. That was a reasonable answer, and I included the exchange in my report.
The school directors did not like that I had asked the question.
I was asked to apologize.
I refused because I could not apologize for something I did not believe was wrong.
Eventually, they found a way to remove me. I was asked to resign so that it would not become embarrassing. Today, people might describe the situation as constructive dismissal. At the time, all I knew was that the teaching job I had kept choosing year after year was suddenly no longer available to me.
And something strange happened.
The excuses disappeared.
I could no longer tell myself, “Stay one more year because the students need you.”
That door had closed.
I still taught in college for a while. Teaching remained something of a safety net. But the urgency was different now. I had to look forward and begin building the next part of my life.
The dream of becoming a speaker had not suddenly become more important.
It had become more urgent.
Then I returned as the speaker
About seven years later, that same school invited me back.
This time, I was not returning as one of their teachers.
I was a paid speaker.
They invited me to talk to student leaders and to help students become more creative writers. I spoke about leadership, creativity, and having the courage to express ideas worth expressing.
There was an irony in that moment that was impossible to miss.
I could now tell students that, yes, when you write within a school, there are rules and responsibilities. The school may decide what it is willing to publish under its name. You need to understand that reality.
But the school’s decision does not mean you must stop writing what you believe needs to be written.
Maybe you cannot publish it there.
Maybe you cannot publish it yet.
Maybe you have to wait until another platform becomes available.
But you can still write it.
You can still think.
You can still develop the courage to say what matters.
I had returned to the place where one question had contributed to the end of my teaching job—and now they were paying me to help young people lead and write more courageously.
Life can be funny that way.
Comfort can keep a dream waiting
When I talk about urgent dreams, I am not talking about the usual “tyranny of the urgent.”
I am not saying that everything important must become an emergency. I do not want to manufacture panic around our ambitions.
I mean something simpler:
If something truly matters to you, at some point you have to give it urgency.
Otherwise, comfort can allow it to wait forever.
My family and I already own the lot where we want to build our house. We started paying for it around ten years ago and finished paying for it about five years ago.
The lot is there.
The house is not.
Part of the reason is obvious. We live comfortably in Los Baños. Thanks to UPLB, we have a place where we do not need to pay a large amount of money for housing. There is no immediate crisis forcing me to build.
And that comfort has made postponement easy.
But I want that house for my children. I want to build something that is not merely an achievement for me, but something tangible I can someday leave to them.
Nobody knows what will happen one year, two years, or three years from now.
At some point, I cannot keep saying the house matters while giving it no claim on what I do today.
I have 28 unpublished books
Books may be an even clearer example.
For almost twenty years, I kept thinking about writing and publishing books.
Technically, I have written books before. Around twenty years ago, I created two books that were eventually published by a former principal. I had been promised that my name would appear as a co-author. In practice, I had written the books.
When the published copies came out, my name was not there.
Perhaps that experience affected me later. Perhaps it did not. I do not want to invent an explanation simply because explanations sound satisfying.
The truth is simpler.
I do not fully know why I kept postponing publishing.
I just kept saying:
I’ll do it tomorrow.
Then another tomorrow came.
And another.
Today, I have 28 books already crafted.
They are not vague ideas sitting in notebooks. They are written. They are ready enough to publish.
And what do I need to do to publish the first one?
Create the cover.
Go to Amazon.
Publish it.
That is how small the remaining work has become.
Something that I allowed to wait for almost twenty years may now require only a day or two.
That is the part I find worth thinking about.
Darkness can be twenty years old
I sometimes think about postponement as darkness.
Imagine a room that has been dark for twenty years.
The darkness feels old because it is old. You might imagine that removing something that has been there for twenty years must require a huge effort.
But it doesn’t.
Light a candle.
Turn on a lamp.
The darkness can disappear in a second.
The age of the darkness does not determine the difficulty of bringing in light.
I think our postponed dreams can work the same way.
You may have delayed a book for twenty years, but the next move may take two days.
You may have avoided a conversation for five years, but beginning it may require one sentence.
You may have wanted to start a business for ten years, but the first useful move might simply be speaking to one customer this afternoon.
You may have dreamed about changing careers for years, but the first move may be sending one application.
The length of your delay does not tell you the size of your next move.
That is easy to forget.
Make what matters urgent
For years, I thought the lesson was that you have to be brave enough to follow your dreams.
I am no longer sure that is the most useful way to say it.
Sometimes courage is involved. Sometimes money is involved. Sometimes responsibilities are real and timing matters.
But sometimes the problem is much simpler.
Something matters, but we have allowed it to remain permanently in the category of someday.
That is when I need to ask myself:
What would it look like if I made this urgent now?
Not frantic.
Not reckless.
Urgent.
If the book matters, I can create the cover and publish it.
If the house matters, I can begin making the financial moves required to build it.
If spending time with my children matters, it should appear somewhere in my actual days.
If something has returned to my mind year after year, perhaps I do not need another year to decide whether it matters.
I may simply need to make the next move unavoidable.
The next move does not have to match the size of the dream
This is perhaps the biggest lesson my own postponements are teaching me.
We often make the next move too large because the dream itself is large.
Building a house is large.
Publishing 28 books sounds large.
Becoming a professional speaker looked enormous when I was still a teacher wondering how people entered that profession.
But I do not have to publish 28 books today.
I need to publish one.
I do not need to build an entire house today.
I need to make the next decision that makes building possible.
And years ago, I did not need to understand the entire professional-speaking industry.
I needed to begin speaking.
When something matters, urgency does not mean completing everything immediately.
Urgency means refusing to leave the next meaningful move indefinitely for tomorrow.
Before August 2026 ends, I intend to publish one of those books on Amazon.
I do not know how I will feel when I finally see the book published under my own name.
I will not guess.
I will write that story after it happens.
For now, there are only two moves in front of me.
Create the cover.
Publish the book.
And then I will know something tomorrow that I cannot know today.
If you already know that something matters but keep leaving it for another day, explore Choose What Matters. It can help you decide what deserves a real claim on your attention, effort, courage, and time.
And once you have decided, continue with Move First. You do not need the entire path before you begin.
Sometimes twenty years of darkness ends when someone finally turns on the light.
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