Why are there students who settle for passing grades even if they can excel in school? Why do some men and women remain in toxic relationships when they know they deserve better? Why do employees stay in unfulfilling jobs despite better opportunities waiting for them?

More often than not, the answer lies in their diminished sense of self-worth. Fear, complacency, the lure of comfort, and the limiting voices of others convince them that they only deserve what is good enough “pwede na”. Instead of striving for excellence, they surrender to mediocrity. They realize too late that when they settle for less than what they deserve, they actually get less than what they settled for.

The Gospel today (Matthew 13:44–46) offers a powerful antidote to this mindset. Jesus tells of two men who willingly sold everything they owned to acquire something of immeasurable value. They understood that life's greatest treasures are never gained by accumulating more but by letting go of what is merely good enough until only the best remains. Sadly, many of us do the opposite. We settle for pwede na instead of pursuing the best that we deserve.

Recently, an AI-generated video by the China Daily portrayed the Filipino as a monkey forced to sing karaoke aboard a boat. Many of us rightly felt insulted. We feel like Norma Desmond in the classic film Sunset Boulevard who, when a reporter remarked, “You used to be big,” she defiantly replied, “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”

We have to admit, however, that we take pride in diminutive things that can be found only in the Philippines: the smallest fish, the smallest active volcano, the smallest deer, and other life forms that are endemic in our country. But for being downsized as a monkey, it hurts.

This was not the first time that this happened. In 1999, many Filipinos proposed a diplomatic protest against Spain which manufactured and popularized chocolate-coated biscuits called “Filipinos.” Advertised as “dark outside but white inside,” the biscuit reeks of offensive racial undertones. But the complaint never prospered because the Foreign Secretary famously asked, “Do Austrians complain about Vienna sausage?”

Perhaps he was not trivializing the wounded dignity of the protesters. He merely wanted us to realize that what should truly offend us is not being compared to a biscuit, but the growing perception that we are a people content with pwede na. Nothing diminishes a nation more than its willingness to settle for mediocrity.

One painful sign of this is the prevalence of mental health problems that afflict many of us today. While such struggles may have genuine biological and psychological causes that deserve professional care, they may be rooted in our diminished moral and spiritual sensibility.

St. Thomas Aquinas once observed: “Man cannot live without pleasure. He who deprives himself of spiritual pleasures goes scavenging for carnal ones.” Mental health issues may be a symptom of a worse malady: We are starving our souls. We are basically spiritual beings so all worldly pleasures eventually disappoint because nothing finite can satisfy our desire for the Infinite.

Mediocrity is also evident in our choice of leaders. After decades of corruption, many Filipinos have come to believe that honesty in public office is impractical, integrity is naïve, and unethical behavior has become normal because “everybody is doing it anyway.” This defeatist attitude encourages voters to choose candidates who are merely the “lesser evil” or those considered “winnable” in surveys.

Jesus warns us that doing so creates more damage than good: “Do not throw your pearls before pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, then turn and tear you to pieces” (Matthew 7:6). Trust is one of those priceless pearls. Once squandered on those who repeatedly betray it, an entire nation pays the price.

The greatest tragedy, then, is not that other people downsize us into monkeys or biscuits. It is when we begin to believe such an unfair valuation that we settle for mediocrity instead of excellence. The two men in today's Gospel remind us that the Kingdom of God belongs to those who refuse to settle for anything less than the best. They believe that the best is what they truly deserve.