President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. on Unshaken with Gary V

GARY VALENCIANO: Hey, everyone. You see why I’m doing this? Because it’s something… I’m going to just read my notes because I think this is perfectly written out for a person that for the person – and I like saying that – person. He stands for something else that also begins with a “P”. But today we’ll speak about the person that many of us may have wanted to ask him questions like the questions I’m going to ask him.

But see, most people know the name before they know the man. But behind every public figure is a private story—a childhood, a family, moments of certainty and also moments where things are just shaken.

And today, we get to know the man behind or beyond the title, and talk about the experiences that shaped the man that he has become.

Okay, I have to be honest but here’s a spiel I never ever thought that I would ever deliver.

Friends, join me as I welcome the President of the Republic of the Philippines, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Sir.

PRESIDENT FERDINAND R. MARCOS JR.: Thank you. Thank you.

VALENCIANO: Thank you so very much for being here and you can greet everybody that’s watching us.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Hello, everyone! That was some intro. We will have to do a good interview if we’re going to live up to the opening spiel that you did.

VALENCIANO: Well, sir, I’m truly humbled because…

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Thank you though. Thank you for this opportunity.

You’re quite right. Sometimes, for people like me, I suppose you sometimes are frustrated. It is only the image, the look that comes out on television or that they see on stage that people know about you.

There’s sometimes that you really wish to explain there’s a lot more to me than just that.

VALENCIANO: Oh, I’m sure there is. And, sir, I’m actually very humbled that I know most of your interviews are done in Malacañang while you’re in the middle of work. But you’ve taken time to come here with your team, and I’m truly grateful humbled that you know, you’ve chosen just to be here and which I think is perfectly sets it up for the questions I’m going to ask.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Excellent, excellent. I’m very grateful that you gave me this opportunity.

VALENCIANO: Now, sir, I know you know I have people who I know for one reason or another. But you, I know because of what I’ve seen and because of what I hear from others.

Can I share with you a moment that I had in Malacañang?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yes.

VALENCIANO: That actually I was very… I didn’t know what to make of it, but it left a mark in me that kind of introduced me to not just you but also the First Lady in a totally different way.

You had just won the presidency. Okay, so this was maybe about 20 – late 2023 and we were celebrating a very intimate birthday party in Malacañang.

I even remember that ‘yung korte ng table it was like a U like this and you were seated here and I was seated kind of far away.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: That’s right.

VALENCIANO: Why? Well, because I remember the First Lady coming up to me, sitting down by me and I’ll act out what she did.

She sat down and she goes, “Hi, Gary.”

And I said “Hello, ma’am.”

And she taps me on the knee like this and she goes, “I know you’re maka-pink.”

PRESIDENT MARCOS: [laughs] She did?

VALENCIANO: And I looked at her and I said I…

PRESIDENT MARCOS: I didn’t know this.

VALENCIANO: Yes, yes. I’ve never been able to share this with you. So, I’m sharing it now.

And, and, and I go, “Yes, ma’am, I am.”

And then she goes, “Yeah, but, you know, with us…” referring to you “…with us, for as long as what you’re doing is for the good of our country and our countrymen, it doesn’t matter what color you support.”

Then she goes, “When’s your next show?”

And I said, “Well, I’m doing a musical called Joseph the Dreamer.” This was back in 2023. And she came to watch, you know, and that said something to me at the time na even if you know I supported another party the “pink”, there was still that openness to, “It’s okay. We’re all in this together anyway.” I just needed to share that with you.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Well, I didn’t know you had that conversation, but I did know she went to that show.

VALENCIANO: Yeah, she did.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: I didn’t know that that was the pasakalye to the show. [laughs]

VALENCIANO: Usually, you have people that will say, “When’s your next show?” but then they really can’t go for some reason. But she did.

And the way she used the word “us”, you know “with us” – “for as long as what you’re doing is for the good of the country and our countrymen”—the way she said it, “it doesn’t matter what color you support.”

And sir, everyone that we see today, especially friends that we have, we know them from their childhood. With you, sir, I’d like to know: what is a childhood memory that immediately puts a smile on your face?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: When I think about the time when we were still living in San Juan, my father was not yet president, I try to think – what are the things that we do as a kid, right?

And one thing that just keeps coming back is a funny sort of thing because it’s not the kind of memory that you would expect.

And in our house in then the Ortega Street, next to us was an empty lot. And there were some – what do you  call? I suppose you call them now informal settlers. I think it’s the politically correct word pero ‘yun ang mga kalaro ko.

And I remember coming home from La Salle, from school, and it was raining heavily. And I went straight down to that empty lot to be with my friends and to play in the rain.

And we just had the best time. We just had absolutely the best time. And I remember that it’s one of the funnest times in my childhood.

And I remember after about doing this for about an hour, my aunt, who was looking after us, because my parents were always out of the house and always busy, so one of my aunts was there to look after us came out with an umbrella and was screaming at us.

She said, “What are you doing? You’re going to get sick!” Duh, duh, duh, duh. And we’re all muddy, and we’re all…And we just laughed and laughed at the poor woman. You know the poor woman was she was just trying to take care of us.

But I remember it was like – it always stand out that it’s the most fun that I had. I couldn’t believe that just playing in the rain with all these other kids would be that much fun, but it was. And I’ll never forget it.

And since from that time on, every time it rained, I would run down to them and say, “Come on, come on, let’s play.”

We never quite had that much fun again. But I remember one of the first times that we did it.

And I know it’s a silly thing, it’s quite childish, but I really remember it very, very well.

VALENCIANO: Well, sir, you know, the reason I asked that is because I think I also went through that when I would play under the rain or even before I would swim and then it’s raining and somebody would come up and say, “You know, it’s raining. You’re going to get wet.”

And I’m going to go into the pool and I’m going to enjoy myself. But I can see. I can see the smile on your face even as we talk about that.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Then my aunt just dragged me off and stuck me in a hot shower.

I said, “You’re going to get sick. I’m going to tell your mother.”

But it was great. It was great.

VALENCIANO: I can understand that, sir, very, very much. But growing up, sir, what did you think you were going to become when you grew up?

Were you like, in my case, I wanted to become, you know, the names that – or the titles that would come out were doctor, architect, pilot.

Did that also cross your mind?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Well, yes, of course, especially when you’re still quite young, when you’re still a child. Of course, you see a policeman and say, “Oh, I want to do that.”

You read something about the fireman. “Oh, I want to be that.”

But you never really are thinking about when was the first time you thought you were going to be a performer, a singer?

You know, you think about, you’re not really thinking about that. The funny thing is, I’ll tell you what I knew I wasn’t going to be – was a politician.

I absolutely said that there’s one walk of life that I am not going to go down because I saw how difficult it is, the sacrifices that my dad had to make, my mother had to make, and the other people had to make around them.

So I said, “hindi ko yata kaya ‘yun,” as we went on. Sabi ko, I’ll do something else entirely.

The time that I guess it was, I started to think that, you know, what will I do, you know, for something every day?

What would I like to do for the rest of my life?

And I had an affinity for mathematics and science in school. And I said, I’m going to be a scientist. I want to be a scientist.

I dreamed of working in a lab in a white coat and doing really important research and continuing to study, maybe teach a little bit.

That was when once I started to think seriously about what you’re going to do with your life, that’s one of the things that came up.

The other thing that really was always there was music.

And my mother, because she’s so musically minded, we always had music in our house.

There was always music playing.

And, you know, of course, again, as a child, you don’t really think about it, but there’s always music.

And so you started to appreciate, you know, you started to become musical.

And so music’s always been part of my life.

So as I grew older, when I was studying already abroad, I started studying music. Because I was going to be…

VALENCIANO: I never knew that.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: I was going to be… I studied music for years. Because, well, of course, because of my mom. And then, you know, you’re in England in the 70s. That’s when everything was happening.

I was hearing all kinds of music. And the reason I seriously studied music was because my housemaster, I was sent to my housemaster to be punished, right, that I did something wrong.

So he said, “You’re here all the time. You’re always in trouble. Go find yourself a hobby so that you can occupy your time doing something constructive.”

And at the time, I was listening to a lot of music.

VALENCIANO: What particular genre were you listening to then? Because there was soul, there was funk, there was the typical Beatles kind of, you know, pop.

PRESIDENT MARCOS:  Well, I remember certainly how you could avoid the Beatles, right?

But I remember when I was in school, this was 1972, second year. So, ’72 ‘yun, 1972 I was… In school, we had to do something after breakfast.

‘Pag second year ka, you inspect the dormitories to see if the first year had swept it properly.

And so I was doing my inspection, and one – in the room, somebody played Lou Reed, “take a walk on the wild side.”

And it stopped me cold.

And I couldn’t believe that you’re allowed to make music like that.

I said, “Puwede ba ‘yan?”

And they played it.

In fact, in the end, I didn’t do my work.

I didn’t go in – because I told the guy, I asked him to play it again and again and again until it was time to go to class.

And for me, that was life changing.

From then on, I started to listen to everything that came out. Everything. I would listen to everything that came out.

And one of the bands that I was listening to a lot was Jethro Tull. I discovered Aqualung, and so I was watching them a lot. I was listening to them a lot.

So I learned to play the flute because Ian Anderson played flute. So I learned to play the flute. Then I played in the orchestra.

Then my instructor said that, you know, if you play the flute, you should play the saxophone. So I learned to play the saxophone.

So… and we had a band. I played in the school orchestra, I played in another amateur orchestra.

So, and but I studied music theory as well, I didn’t just play. So, there were my two dreams.

My sisters always said the two dreams in your life were to be an astronaut because of the science and to be a rock star.

So, that really… It’s true.

I would have done anything to fly in space and I would have done anything to have a life in music.

VALENCIANO: It was something about music, no?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: There really is. There really is.

VALENCIANO: I mean, the way it grips the soul.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yeah. And it’s a whole fascinating thing because, unlike any other art form, music doesn’t exist anywhere else except in your brain.

Think about it.

A sculpture you can touch, a painting you can look at, and you can see the brush stroke, all the other forms.

This is just sound. And it only becomes music because your brain interprets it as music. And then, but the universality of it, everyone understands it.

I remember we were in Africa once.

We went on safari and we were in the jeep looking at the animals. And I had my Walkman. Uso pa ‘yung Walkman. Bago pa ‘yung Walkman.

VALENCIANO: It’s coming back, though.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: So I was listening to that.

And the guys with me, who were the locals, they were trackers, they were professional hunters kung ano-ano. Pinagtatawanan — they were laughing at me. Because I was like this you know… We weren’t doing anything anymore, we’re just going back to camp.

I was dancing, and they were laughing and said,
“Look at this guy.”

And I said, “Come here.”

And I was listening to Charger. I was listening to Charger.

And I said, “Come here. Here, listen to this.”

You could see the…And these guys had never heard, even, I suppose, Western type music ever. And they were absolutely fascinated.

So one day we were having dinner, they said, “Play it again, play it again, play it again, play it again.”

At the end of that trip, I gave them everything. I said, “Here, keep it.” And I kept sending them all kinds of music that I was finding.

And I said, it’s just universal. It doesn’t matter where it comes from.

It doesn’t matter what form it’s in. If it’s Arabic, they use the notes differently. The phrasing is different. Everything is different.

Then you have those, what they call throat singers, the ones that can sing two notes at the same time.

VALENCIANO: That’s unique.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: But immediately, if you have any interest in music, whatsoever. When you hear this, your mouth hangs – Wow! What is that?

And some of the music that came out, I heard Led Zeppelin played on a sitar, and it was brilliant.

And it was just universality of it.

And in the end, I’ve come to the conclusion: my life was lived with a soundtrack. When I hear a song, I remember when I first heard it, what I was doing, how I was feeling.

I really lived every big event in my life. There was music, there was an accompanying track ongoing at the time.

VALENCIANO: You know, sir, it just came to mind just now. But when the whole presidency thing is done, I wonder what it would be like if you were able to gather songwriters that could write songs about the seasons of yours within the presidency and maybe your life and come up with a soundtrack of that. Because if music is such a big part of you, and it obviously is, sir, because I can see that how passionate you are about it.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: It’s amazing, is that if you can listen to, like, for example, classical music where there are no words to it.

VALENCIANO: No words.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: And I’ve listened to music that’s purely instrumental, and I laugh and I get sad and it’s romantic and you get excited, and it’s not as if somebody’s telling you, you know, singing that I’m in love with somebody.

Okay, that too, that’s fine too. But it’s – that fascinates me is that how can just a set of notes make you feel something?

Yeah, I mean, and it you know, I will always remember a quotation from Einstein, who was a big music lover.

And he says, I could write out, I could describe a Mozart symphony by the changes in air pressure, but you will not understand anything about Mozart if I did that.

And he says, “How do you describe music?” And that’s what he said, and because you know he was a physicist.

And that’s it. And that’s when I came to that thinking.

That’s right. It’s only in your brain that it becomes music.

It doesn’t become music until it goes in your ear and your brain interprets it.

VALENCIANO: As such, yeah.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: And then think about some of the stuff you heard when you were very young that you didn’t really get, right?

I don’t, in the beginning, I don’t like jazz. I don’t get it.

But as you’re musical, you know more, you hear more, you start to appreciate the subtleties of all of these things.

So it develops, it develops in your brain. And it’s just, for me, it’s a miracle. It really is a miracle. Music is a miracle for me.

It’s one of the most enduring parts of my life. I don’t know, if you took music away from me, I don’t know how I would manage.

I just don’t know how I would get through the day. It’s the only thing that can change my mood.

There are two things that can change my mood. Music’s one of them.

VALENCIANO: Wow.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: The other one’s my children.

VALENCIANO: Okay, so music obviously is still very much a part of you.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Oh, sure.

VALENCIANO: And I don’t think that’s ever going to leave, you know?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: I hope not.

VALENCIANO: No, I don’t think so. I don’t think so because the reason I’m smiling, sir, is because the way you’re talking about music is exactly the way I love all kinds of songs and all kinds of music, even that what you said, classical music. And also, when people ask me, so what do you like listening to? No, I just love listening to music, period.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: But is it… You have different moods, no?

VALENCIANO: Yes.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: If you’re feeling, if you want to get energized, you listen to a certain type of music.

VALENCIANO: Yes.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: If you want to get thinking, you listen to another type of music.

VALENCIANO: Ironically, though, before I step out on stage, usually I come up with a bang. I don’t listen to songs that make me move. I listen to songs that make me move here.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Really?

VALENCIANO: And then only then, when I feel like, okay, I’m ready, then I go.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Oh, that’s unexpected.

VALENCIANO: Yeah. I don’t listen to. Just to fill up or to go along with what I’m supposed to be doing.

No, I listen to the exact opposite. And many times it’s not with lyrics. It’s just the audio that moves the soul.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yeah. You try to get that feeling again that you need to get to so that you can perform. I suppose that’s…

VALENCIANO: That’s what I do.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: I never would have expected that.

VALENCIANO: Yeah. Well, you. I mean, talking about things unexpected. Even if your dad was already in power and all, when did you actually hear someone say, one day, you know, you will be president?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Oh, God. I’ve been hearing it all my life.

VALENCIANO:  Talaga?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yeah. And maybe that’s part of the reason I said, no, you can’t tell me…

I think I first heard it when I was three years old, four years old. And they said, “Your father is going to be president. You too, you should be president also.” “When you grow up, you will be president too.”

And I always said, “Of course not. I’m not going to be… I’m going to be something else.”

And maybe that was part of the resistance because everyone’s pushing you to go in that way.

And you know just to be contrarian, I said, “Well, that’s exactly what I won’t do then because that’s what everybody’s expecting me to do.”

VALENCIANO: It’s amazing that you’re saying that because there are many others that follow suit. You know the father was a senator, the father was a mayor, a governor. And then you see everybody following.

And to hear you say, “No, that was not for me.”

PRESIDENT MARCOS: It was, it really… Because I don’t know, it just, it’s not something that, you know, when I watched my dad making a speech or having meetings with all these important people, and you’d listen in, it didn’t serve immediately, that’s something I’d like to do.

It never, never… All the way, all the time that I was growing up, it was never that.

But when I watched the astronauts landing on the Moon, I’d like to do that. And when I started watching musicians playing, I said, I’d like to do that.

But politics never had that attraction for me, funnily enough.

Yeah, life’s funny. Look where I am now. [laughs]

VALENCIANO: I know. And okay, you did mention about you playing in the rain.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yeah.

VALENCIANO: Okay. But can you remember the moment at that time, okay, you said your parents were out all the time, most of the time. But when did you actually realize that your family was not quite like other families? Did you ever have that moment when you go, wow, we’re different?

And it’s not because you’re different because you’re a weird family or what. It’s just that there’s something different being a kid in that situation. Did that ever hit you? Was there ever a moment like that?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Well, I always sort of had that feeling that my dad was important, that he’s an important guy.

Because people would come and they’d be very deferential to him and all that.

And I knew that he was very serious about his work. So I knew my dad. My mom also, not so much, but my dad, I could tell immediately he seems to be well respected and well thought of, et cetera, et cetera.

But for me personally, it really began when I started visiting my classmates’ houses and I’d see the way they live.

And my initial reaction, “Oh boy, they’re different.” These people are different. Hindi naman weird pero iba sila ‘no?

But then after a while, no, no, no, normal ‘yan, kayo ‘yung iba. Slowly you come to that realization that no, no, no, they are living normal lives. You are the one… You are the crazy ones. You are the weird ones, you know.

But that happened siguro mga Grade 3. Kasi that was about the time I started visiting my classmates, my friends’ houses, you know, and make merienda there. We do study together, whatever. And I could see the way people lived.

And it wasn’t anything to do with whether they were well off or whether they had a nice house or a small house. It wasn’t about that. It was really how they dealt with each other and you know their day, what their day was occupied with.

And immediately you said, this is different, you know. But the more homes I visited, then I suddenly, that’s when I came to realize that no, no, no, this is how other people live. You are the people who live in a very strange way.

So, yeah, that was around that time. I must have been about eight. Alam ko Grade 3 kasi may kaibigan na ako noong Grade 3 eh. So pumupunta na ako sa bahay nila.

VALENCIANO: Sir, there was one time, not too long ago, that I was invited to do a few songs for your birthday party. And it was just you and your friends that apparently I think you grew up with. And what I noticed was it wasn’t really that many.

Meaning, you know, you’d expect a lot of people to come to a president’s party. But were these some of the people that you actually grew up with?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yes.

VALENCIANO: Because it seemed like you were really, you knew them, you know, so you’ve kept those friendships going.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Oh, absolutely. They were like a real anchor. I mean, my classmates from the time I was in grade school in La Salle are still my friends. I still see them regularly.

And when I have a dinner or party or something that you’re coming to perform, they’re always there. And then the friends I developed over the years, really, still up to now, I’ve kept up with them.

Because it’s important because they’ve always, for me, represented the normal part of my life where, you know, they speak to me like a friend.

They don’t speak to me like, you know, somebody important.

VALENCIANO: And you need people like that.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Oh, you absolutely need that. And it’s not only, you know, for the obvious things like you have to keep your feet on the ground. Yes, of course, they’re important for that.

But it’s for your own mental health. Because you start to believe all these people, “ang galing-galing mo.” “Uh, you’re so this, you’re so that.”

You know, you have to break away from that and talk to normal people and say, “Pare, you’re not doing so great.”

You need to hear that. And that’s valuable to me. That’s extremely important to me that I hear an honest opinion because siyempre, you know, people try to be nice to you. Sometimes because they’re just nice. Filipinos are so sweet and so nice, so they’re always very nice to you.

And you know, there’s the darker side to that is that may kailangan sa’yo, so nagsisipsip, you know. And you’re in that position where you can actually – that sometimes I know where it works with some people, but I don’t want it to work with me.

And so that’s why I keep my friends all close. And when – even when I became President, they started calling me “Mr. President,” and I had to pull them aside. “Would you stop it?” When there’s just the two of us.

I mean, if we’re in public, okay, maybe you have to address, you know, out of respect not for me but for the office, right? That’s fine. Pero ‘pag tayo lang, puwede ba huwag mo nang… Kasi ‘pag sinabi mong “Mr. President”, hindi ko alam kung sino ang kausap mo ‘di ba?

But that part – the normal part of your life, or the people that you whose opinions or who have known you and who you know love you, really care for you, they’ll tell you the truth. They’ll tell you, and that is so important.

Also, they’re the only ones who really make you laugh because they know your background. And when you’re you know, when you get a bit big headed, they’ll bring you right down without you know, without thinking twice.

VALENCIANO: Here’s a little trivia that I heard. It says here, I heard that you are not a fan of dessert.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: No.

VALENCIANO: But I hear that the First Lady is.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yes.

VALENCIANO: So, how is that?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Well, so people bring us presents, right?

VALENCIANO: Yes.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: And they bring all this nice food and everything. And so she makes up for the rest of the family.

My sons also are not huge dessert eaters.

VALENCIANO: Oh, really?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: I guess that’s my fault because that’s my dad’s fault, actually. Because, you know, he was very strict about his diet, and he’d always look over and say, “You know, that’s not good for you.”

And so it never became part of our eating. My mom or my two sisters, my God, they eat cake like you couldn’t believe.

VALENCIANO: Well, I think the gifts that you…

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Liza makes up for the rest of us.

VALENCIANO: Liza makes up for it. But I think now that people are hearing you, I think now, “hey, we have to think of what other gifts we can give the President. Basta ‘wag ‘yung sweets ha. Huwag ‘yung dessert ha.” And then I heard also, which kind of makes sense because you just mentioned that you were so much into math and science. So ang balita po raw eh you are a sci-fi fan?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Oh, yes, absolutely.

VALENCIANO: Okay, then here’s the question, sir. And I’m sure everybody out there watching right now is going to want to know what the answer to this question is: Is it Star Trek or Star Wars?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Oh, that’s tough. Come on.

Don’t do that to me. That’s hard. That’s like saying who’s your favorite child or what’s your favorite song?

You know, what’s your favorite song? Can you actually answer that?

VALENCIANO: No, I can’t.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Kaya nga eh, that’s hard.

VALENCIANO: It depends.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Well, you know, but Star Trek, the original Star Trek, it was so different because you never saw anything like that before.

And you’re talking about alien — you’re starting to think about aliens. And one of the… What I always found fascinating was that when they met up with an alien and a new life, right? And they have to figure it out. And that the way that the alien operated was completely different from our own instincts and our…

And I thought that whole process was just unbelievable.

And then, of course, you have all these machines that beep and light up. So, of course, that’s interesting to me as well.

But it’s funny though, when you look back, because ‘di ba lumalabas pa rin ‘yung old Star Trek once in a while?

VALENCIANO: Yes, up to now.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: And you see, I don’t believe that we really were bought into this because it’s so clunky, right? There’s no CGI, the effects are really…

VALENCIANO: And the actions were really…

PRESIDENT MARCOS: You know, it’s just a guy wearing a mask. I mean, wow, we were already fascinated by that.

But yeah, I… And then when I was in school, I discovered Isaac Asimov. And so I read everything the Foundation series, I, Robot, everything. I read everything.

And then I started reading all these… And then the movies started to catch up to sci-fi.

Star Wars came along.

I couldn’t believe that we could do this now.

VALENCIANO: “The Force is strong with this one.”

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Exactly. Exactly.

And it was complete.

And it was – the scale of it was universal. I mean, in terms of the universe, right?

And it took you away from that thinking that you’re on earth, you’re a person, you go to work, you go to sleep.

You know, it takes out of all that and makes you… Make your mind talagang challenges – challenges your mind.

No, no, no, think about this, think about that.

And when you read the books or you watch a good one, a film, a sci-fi film, it really forces your mind to think differently.

Stop thinking, you know, like a human being, think like an alien, or stop thinking about being earthbound, you know. Think about space flight and going to Mars or going to wherever.

And that for me – that’s why it’s so much fun because you really get to… In the beginning, it was just books and it was your imagination. But now, the films, what’s coming out, I mean, when you watch some of these things, it’s like, I can’t believe that we’re able to do that.

And it goes together also with your understanding of science. Because I’m studying science and you can see it, you know, you read about it, which is fine. You use your imagination to try picture it in your head.

But then, when the CGI came out and we were doing some amazing things, I said, oh, yeah, that’s probably what it would look like, you know.

Or maybe, no, that’s not what it would look like. But at least you’re thinking in those terms about those things, which you normally, if you weren’t interested in science fiction, I don’t think you’d be thinking that way.

VALENCIANO: You know, speaking to you in this way is something that I never thought I’d ever do. But it is so evident that, yeah, music and your love for science, which really plays a major role in the hearts of many Filipinos today, especially music. You know, OPM is at an all-time high. It’s fascinating to see…

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Okay, you’re a very successful performer musician.

VALENCIANO: Thank you.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: What is our affinity to music?

Because many of my foreign friends ask me, why are you guys so musically oriented? And I cannot answer. Can you? I’ve always wanted to ask somebody that.

VALENCIANO: Okay. As if I’m speaking as an expert here. I’m just going to share.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Well, you are, of course, you’re an expert.

VALENCIANO: I’m just going to share what I feel.

But there were certain artists that came from the U.S. that said that the Philippines are the “blacks of the United States.”

Meaning, they hear a song, they get into it, and when they sing along with the artist, they don’t just sing along with the artist, but even the inflections and the ad libs, nakakasabay sila, you know.

But when you look at the history of the Black community, they’ve gone through a lot in life. And the Philippines has gone through so much.

And it’s because of, I feel, these moments where the Filipino is broken in some way that the expression of a song, like if you make a, and it’s not to put down anybody, okay?

But if you put the Filipino with other nationalities singing the very same song…

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yes.

VALENCIANO: There’s a certain… Kumbaga may pinaghuhugutan. And I think it naturally is a part of who we’ve become because of what we’ve gone through and what we are constantly going through with family, especially now with mental health issues and all.

There’s something that we dig in from that not many people have unless they’re willing to go through what people all gone through. That’s just my take on it.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yeah, that’s probably the best explanation I’ve ever had because, you know, there was…

Now, I always thought that we already, I always said that it was, we always had – I always felt that, that we had an affinity.

My example before, before the advent of karaoke, was that if you’re in the States and you pull an American to sing, they’ll be angry with you.

You pull a Filipino to sing, they’ll say, “thank you. Thank you for letting me sing.”

And I don’t know why that is.

I could never answer that question when it was asked to me. Why are you Filipinos so good at music?

I never understood that. And then now we are now known as the best concert audience.

VALENCIANO: That’s it. Yes, that’s not difficult to believe.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: But I’ve heard it from Elton John, I’ve heard it from Sting, I’ve heard it from The Corrs, I’ve heard it from many, many, many of these artists that come.

And they said, the audience does all the work for me. I don’t have to sing. I don’t have to perform because the audience is singing for us.

And they said, You are all, you know, all the words, number one, and you all sing in tune. And you know the song, and the song comes out when you sing, it comes out right.

And I said, well, I believe that because, you know, there are very, very few Filipinos. It’s very hard for me now to even remember one ‘yung sintunado.

The Filipinos the sintunado that I hear are doing it deliberately, nagpapatawa, ‘di ba.

But normally, pagka kumakanta ‘yung Pilipino, ganun-ganun lang. And it’s very natural for us. It’s always intrigued me why Filipinos are like that. I don’t know.

Maybe the Brazilians are also similar?

VALENCIANO: Oh, I really think so. I think that there is every nation naman has a certain reason as to why they have an affinity to something.

But the Philippines, being so much into music, I think it really even baffles or shocks the Filipino.

Because there are even contests in the States when Jed Madela won a certain contest in the States, they actually prohibited Filipinos from joining that contest. Because they always win. We would always win.

And I’m like, what? I don’t know if it’s the same, if it’s ongoing up to now, that particular rule. But that was what I was told.

Jed Madela just brought the house down, and then the next year, somebody else came out it was a Filipino and he brought the house down.

So, every year parang Pilipino na lang ang nananalo.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: One of my favorite stories is uh, is I saw a clip out of I think it was America, America’s Got Talent, yeah, America’s Got Talent.

And this girl came out, this young girl, um, Oriental, started singing and sang brilliantly. And Simon Cowell got up at the end of it, ‘di ba they make their comment, and Simon Cowell is a tough guy, when he talks about the performer. He just stood up with a sign and said, “Are you a Filipina?” And then pushed the button back. Tapos.

VALENCIANO: There’s something about…

PRESIDENT MARCOS: That’s our rep. That’s our reputation.

We’ve gained that reputation, and I think rightly so, but I cannot explain it. I cannot explain.

Yours is the best explanation I’ve heard so far, by the way.

VALENCIANO: I think if there’s one word, if it were to be put into one word about the Filipino and his affinity with music, the one simplest yet deepest word I can say is that: blessed.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yes.

VALENCIANO: I think the Philippines is just blessed with amazing singers, amazing vocalists, amazing performers, and on.

And it’s nice that when we come out of a place and they may not know us, but we’re able to leave, “hey man, what’s your name?” “I’m Gary V.”

PRESIDENT MARCOS: It’s nice that we have this affinity for music. Because it’s not something you have to explain.

VALENCIANO: No, you don’t.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: You sing a kundiman to a European, they get it like that.

“Oh, what a lovely love song, right?”

You make harana, they understand immediately. And you don’t have to explain.

It’s a good thing that that’s the thing that we are good at, that very universal language.

It’s a universal… I don’t know if language is the right term for it, but it’s a way of expressing and communicating.

VALENCIANO: Well, they say nga music is the universal language. We’ve often heard that. But I think the Philippines just has a different way of expressing that language.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: I think so.

VALENCIANO: It uniquely makes it their own way of doing it.

But, sir, when you were growing up, what were you naturally good at? And what was that which frustrated you the most? A skill that you could just not, you couldn’t master?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: That I couldn’t manage?

Well, I don’t know. No, that’s hard, that’s hard.

VALENCIANO: I know, it’s a tough question.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: That’s the hard one. What are the things that I didn’t really get involved with because I wasn’t any good at it?

[Sir, dancing?]

Oh, yeah, I’m not particularly good at dancing.

I cannot stop dancing if there’s music, but I don’t do it very well. [laughs]

Yeah, I know you should laugh because you dance so well, but you know, no, it’s not something, it’s not something… I never wanted to take up dance.

It’s just – considering how involved I was with music, yes, dance just didn’t interest me whatsoever.

VALENCIANO: So, it didn’t interest you, it was not something that you were interested in, and it just didn’t…

PRESIDENT MARCOS: No, I mean, I enjoy watching a ballet. I see musicals. I appreciate it. I mean, wow, that was good.

But for myself, not really. That’s something that I’m particularly good at, no.

VALENCIANO: What was something that you were actually good at doing?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: That I was immediately good at? Sport.

I’m not bad at sport, actually, because I’m reasonably well coordinated. And I picked up sport – I can pick up a sport quite easily. If you just give reasonably good instruction.

And that comes also because my father was always very insistent that we be involved in sport to be physically fit, to be strong, to exercise, et cetera. So I always jumped in.

I didn’t have a tough time learning the sport and getting better as long as I really worked at it. I could feel myself getting better at it and performing better.

VALENCIANO: Is there a hobby or interest that you have that might actually surprise us?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: I spend a lot of time fiddling with cars.

VALENCIANO: With cars?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yeah, with machines.

VALENCIANO: With machines?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: I like building things, breaking them down. That’s for me, that’s one of the best anti-stress things to do is to just take things apart, take a machine apart, study it, clean it.

Put it back together again, modify it, do something else to it. Think of… Yeah, that’s something I like to do.

I was still very young, my sisters already called me “siraniko.” Because all my toys I take apart, of course, you couldn’t put them back together again, right? So, “siraniko.”

VALENCIANO: But, you know, I’m laughing because I kind of used to do that with my toys before. If it’s especially remote control. How does it throw that signal?

So I’ll take it apart and then it’s gone. And then I can’t put it back together. Were you competitive during your younger years?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yes. I mean, I think up to now. You know, you said, let’s see. You do something and then someone does it better than you?

And I said, “okay, I can improve pa, I can make it there.”

Ayaw magpatalo eh. Yeah, I guess in that sense.

But I’m not obnoxious about it. I just really try to make…

It’s for me, it’s like, no, no, you can do better. You can do better. Make it better. You go practice. You know, learn some more then you’ll get better.

VALENCIANO: So we’re still tackling the times when you were younger. But what would you say has been the discipline that has served you most throughout your life?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Study. That for me has kept me going. I read a lot. I study a lot. If there’s something that’s happening that’s interesting, I try to learn. I really look into it. I study it.

I find all the material that I can and I learn it. And that’s you… It’s basically, it comes maybe from the science side. I just want to understand the world.

You know, when something happens, why did that happen? Why is it raining? Why did that machine, how did that machine do that?

Why did it do, why does the earth go around the sun? Why does, you know, all of these things.

And so I think that’s part of it. I don’t like it when I don’t understand what’s going on.

So I look it up and I try to make sure that I do at least have some kind of working knowledge of all of the things that I deal with.

And that’s just a habit ingrained into us, all of us in the family. I remember one uncle saying that you’re the only family I know where reading is a bad habit.

Because we would read and read and read.

VALENCIANO: That’s all of you? All of the siblings?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: All of us. All of us. All of us can go through books like you cannot believe.

But it’s the best thing because you can go anywhere and do anything and think of anything.

And one of the greatest pleasures is reading something and having that eureka moment. Oo nga ano? He’s right. I never thought of that before.

Halika, basahin natin ulit. And then what else comes after that? That for me is like, wow, I had a good day if that happens in my day, I had a good day.

VALENCIANO: Would you say that that’s happened many times already in the past because of the number of books that you’ve all read?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yes, that’s why, you know… Now that’s what, when people are traveling and they say, you want me to, I’m going to wherever, New York, I’m going to London, I’m going to Paris. I said, “what do you want? You want me to bring you back something?”

“Find me a good book. Find me a good book. Find me a couple of good books.” And that for me, that’d be.

Unfortunately, now I have such little, so little time to read. But I still try. And I still… For me, that’s the signal to my brain is that you’re on holiday, nagbabakasyon ka, it when I’m actually holding a book and I can read it from the beginning until the end. Then that’s my holiday. That’s the best possible holiday that I could have.

VALENCIANO: You know, I’m sure, sir, like what you said, now it’s a bit different because you don’t have the time to do it.

But I’m sure people watching us right now would want to know what it is like needing to function while constantly being watched?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: You have to be secure in yourself because people are judging you.

When they’re watching you, they’re judging you, right? Not necessarily everyone, but that comes with it.

You have to be secure in the knowledge that – you must have the strength of your convictions. That if you believe in something, it doesn’t matter what the judgment of some other people is. You believe in it. I know this is right. This is what I’m going to do. And I’m going to continue doing it.

On the other hand, I listen to criticism because sometimes they’re right. And that for me is more important than if they’re… Sometimes they’re just hurtful. Sometimes it’s just – you know they don’t like your face. Well, that’s fine, that doesn’t bother me.

But I am… I try to get past maybe it’s a little hurtful what they say, and it’s not, but I try to get past that and I try to be objective and say, baka tama ah? They may have a point.

Mostly they’re not right, but oh, sometimes, sometimes they are, and that’s why you have to be open-minded about it.

VALENCIANO: That’s it, yeah. And I don’t know how people are feeling now hearing you and your answers. And I think it’s a reflection of what I’m feeling because I’m sure there are questions like this that people would want to ask people of leadership and not just people of leadership, but a President.

What is it like?

You know, like for example, when people have expectations of you even before you walk into the room? Bago ka pa pumasok mayroon na silang ine-expect. How do you keep performing for them? And what does that feel like?

For example, you wake up in the morning and you’re not feeling exactly okay, and you have to attend this one thing, and then that’s only one of several things you have to attend, and you have to go out there. What does that feel like?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: You just have to do it. I mean, just, you know, just to power through it. I mean, sometimes you’re physically not 100%. You have a cold or something, or you just come out of your sickbed, but you have to do it.

So you have to do it, and you just don’t think about it.

Just do it. You know, but don’t, don’t… I, the many times I remind myself, stop thinking so hard about it.

Just go and do it. You know, just go and do it.

And you, so long as you take the work or whatever it is you’re doing, you take it seriously. If you’re taking it seriously, you forget about all of the other things.

VALENCIANO: Got it.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: I find that, you know, I’m walking around, I have something in my head and it’s very, I’m worried, really worried about it, or it’s getting me down, or whatever.

Once I shift and I’m doing something else and I start concentrating, then that goes away.

So, if you’re concentrating, you concentrate because you’re taking it serious, you’re serious about whatever it is you’re doing, then you have to have the ability to just put other things aside and take care of what’s in front of you and what needs to get done and what you have to figure out, the problem that you have to solve.

So, even if you’re not feeling well, even if you’re worried about something else, at least you have to be in that moment and be really serious about what you’re doing because it matters. It’s important, especially in my position.

What I do, what I decide to do affects many other people, sometimes millions of people. So, you have to be very careful about getting it right.

And so, you cannot get it right unless you’re very serious and you think very hard about it, about what you’re doing. And you know, you don’t, you’re not just, “ah bahala na.” “Let them do it.” “Leave it up to them.”

You take responsibility for everything. And once you do that, you function. You are able to function.

VALENCIANO: Well, sir, it is called Unshaken, the stories of grit and grace. And everybody goes through moments. Those moments with grit moments.

Would it be okay for you to walk us through a moment or season in your life where everything was shaken?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Oh, sure. I don’t think anyone would be surprised that it was ‘86 when my life was totally upended. And not only my life, but the life of every person around me.

All my relatives, all my friends, all the people I worked with, everything, everything changed. Everything completely changed.

One day, you’re the son of the president and you’re sitting in a palace. And then two days later, you’re in Hawaii and you don’t know what on earth has happened.

You’re not allowed to go back home. You cannot even get a job. You cannot even talk to people that you feel you have a need to talk to because they isolated us.

And so it is, put it this way the reason is the biggest, shall we say, part, the biggest shaken moment of my life is that none of what we did after ‘86… When we got to Hawaii, our lives did not resemble our previous life in any way whatsoever.

What was commonplace in our previous life, what something that you saw, you did, you heard every day, you just didn’t have any of that.

Instead, it was replaced by this thing that you just never had to deal with before. Or maybe you knew about it intellectually, you’ve read about it in books, you’ve heard people tell you so but you haven’t intended to live it. Now you have to.

And that’s why, ‘yung pano ba ‘to? How do you, what do we, how do you, what’s this? How do you, you know, what’s this situation? What is this? How do you deal with it? What do you do now? What’s the next thing? You know, how do I make it better?

And for a long time, you’re preoccupied by trying to get back to where you were before. Like the good old days, bring it back to the good old days.

But then you eventually. Look, there’s no more good old days. Time moves in one direction, it doesn’t go back and forth. So, you’re moving down that timeline. So, deal with it.

And that was tough to do because all your life it’s the same life. And now you’re what? How old was I?

I must have been about 28 years old in ‘86. And suddenly, that whole life was just disappeared. And now this is your life. And I said, no, I’m not sure I like this one as much as I like the old one. Well, sorry, but that’s it.

And that’s why, for me, it was the biggest like earthquake in my life. And I know in the lives of many, many other people who were associated with us, who were – certainly my family, but all the people that were around us. To just get your head around… You know, you ask yourself things like, have I turned into a different person? Or if you’re still the same person, how do you deal now with this?

Because you live in a set of – in a context, right? You deal with sets of circumstances in your life and you learn, you get better at it. Alam ko nang gawin ‘yan. I understand how it works, et cetera. Suddenly, you don’t understand how anything works anymore. Even how you deal with people, what to do with yourself.

VALENCIANO: The question I was going to ask you was: what surprised you most about the shaking season? But I guess you’ve already basically… Have you answered that already? With now you have to adjust to something that you’re not used to and everything you had before, it’s no longer there.

Was that what surprised you, or was there something that surprised you about yourself through that shaking season?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Well, when it first happens, you’re just confused all the time. Everything perplexing.

Why did that happen? Ganoon ba ‘yun? Ganoon ba ‘yan? I don’t get it. I don’t understand. You’re walking around in confusion. You just don’t get what’s going on.

Now, of course, as time goes on, you start to figure stuff out. And you have to really go back into yourself.

And you have to say, what kind of person am I, in fact?

And so, that kind of person, how does that kind of person that you think you are react to this situation?

You have to go through that whole process, which is something that you do as a child, teenager, as you’re growing up.

Now, you have to do it all over again as an adult. You know, adults are harder to form than children are. So that’s the difficulty.

VALENCIANO: No, sir. And I think everyone can relate to what I’m going to say.

But everyone has that season or seasons where their lives are shaken. Maybe it happened 10, 15 years ago, 20 years, 23, 30 years ago, but you’re still around.

And I think what many would like to know is with everything that you’ve gone through and everything that you are still going through today, what anchors you? What is it that anchors you to the seasons that you face that kind of bring a little shaking into your life?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: That’s another very hard question. What’s my touchstone sort of thing?

Faith plays a part of it. My faith is – it reminds you when you’re completely lost what’s good and what’s bad? I want to do good things, I don’t want to do bad things. So, what are the good things?

You’ve been taught that these are the good things, be a virtuous person, be a kind person. Okay, now that’s a big guide.

And the other thing is, I suppose, remembering what it is that you in fact want to achieve.

Because you go through that, your whole life is totally changed and upended. And you don’t know what is success anymore.

And it becomes smaller and smaller. You just live through the day or, you know, just little wins. And then those wins become bigger and bigger, you know, and you say, okay, I managed to do that. So I’m sure I managed to do the next thing. And then, okay, I’ll build on that and do the next thing.

So it’s that process where you are trying to first decide what is it that you want to do? And then you have to figure out how you’re going to do it.

For us, when we were in Hawaii, the one thing that we would wake up every day how do we get home? How do we get home? How do we get home? That was the single thing that every day we would think about and talk. Paano makauwi? Paano makauwi? We have to get home.

We have to go back home. And slowly, maybe we sort of figured it out. We had all these plans. I said, we’ll do this, we’ll do that. This work, that didn’t work.

So slowly, slowly, slowly you make progress. And then once you’re doing something, it’s back to what we spoke about earlier, now you’re concentrating on something.

So your mind has direction. Yeah, exactly. Your thinking has direction already. And if you have that direction, then you have something to hang on to. So your day means something. You wake up in the day to do something.

But there was a period in my life when I’d wake up… In Hawaii, you’d wake up and you clean your teeth and you say, “Okay, what do I do now? What do I do now?

What do I know now?” You don’t get out of your pajamas anymore because what for? What for?

Nobody’s going to see me, nobody cares what I’m wearing. What for? But you come back.

I mean, in my particular case, what happened was that I had to do normal things. I had to clean the house. I had to wash the dishes. I had to go to the post office. I had to go grocery shopping. I had to put gas in the car.

So, those little things bring you back to normalcy, doing those normal things. Buti na lang I already lived abroad, and those things are natural to me. Because if you were living in the palace, you don’t put gas in the car, you don’t clean the plates, you don’t cook, you don’t, you know.

But since we were used to doing that anyway, so that was, yeah, maybe that’s the anguish. That is those little things going to the laundry, learning how to use the… In the States, you go into the laundromat. I didn’t know what to put, where you put the fabrics softener. Somebody had to teach me.

But those little things bring you back to normalcy. Then you start thinking about bigger things. And you say, okay, how do we get home? Who do I talk to? What arrangements do I have to make? Et cetera, et cetera. And then you start moving along.

It’s those little wins. It’s those little wins. One of the best advice that I’ve heard was from a military man. And he says, “How do you credit…?” He’s a successful person.

And they said, “How do you credit your success?”

And I said, “Make your bed. Just make your bed.” In other words, have a little win. Now you made your bed. Now you have a little win.

Get dressed well. Now another little win, and another one, and another one, and another one, and another one. And that’s basically the process that you go through. And I really think that’s what saved me.

And then I’m lucky that I had to live abroad and I had to do those “normal things.” The things I talk about clean the house, wash your clothes, normal stuff. And you take some stability out of doing that.

The one thing also that surprised me is how much time you spend doing mundane things, you know, because you get spoiled.

Of course, you get spoiled. You have 100 people looking after you, you know, you sort of say, “Can I have…?”

It’s there already, you know. Ito, nandiyan na. ‘Di ba? You just make a comment, they take care of it.

Ganoon talaga ang buhay. You do get spoiled. But luckily, my parents, the one thing that they did not want us to become was spoiled.

And living abroad and studying abroad and doing things as a “normal person,” that stood me in good stead. I don’t know, I’ve never spoken to my sisters about it, but it stood me in good stead.

And I’m very grateful for having had the experience that allowed me to come back into a life, maybe a different life, but back into a life. That was… These are hard questions, man.

VALENCIANO: I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to. But what’s actually something that I’m thankful for is that we’re not, it feels like I’m not, I’m just speaking to a man who happens to be called “The President”. But I’m gonna need to know the man behind the power, you know.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Well, I’m glad because I often, still, I still see myself that way. And it’s like, “Oo nga pala, I’m President ‘no.” I really have, I sometimes have that thought. I remember right after the election, people, “Have you… has it sunk in?” And now, when I think of it, it hasn’t really sunk in yet.

But it goes, that kind of thinking goes away when you start working. Yeah, I say, no, no, no, there something… stop thinking about that. You have to take care of this, you have to take care of that.

But you know, sometimes when somebody who was of higher stature than I was all my life now calls me “Sir”. “Why is he calling me sir? Siya ‘yung sir ‘di ba?” But, you know, then you say, oo nga pala, I became President. [laughs]

VALENCIANO: Sir, we just want to remind you that you are President. [laughs]

No, sir, did that season, the time in Hawaii and all, did that help make you a stronger person, a harder person, or softer person? Softer, not in a negative sense, but softer in the sense na mas marami kayong –mas nagkaroon kayo ng mas malalim na pagkaintindi sa mga pinagdadaanan ng lahat, you know. I don’t know, or both. Did it do all of that to you?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Well, it made you tougher in the sense that you are able to deal with hardship because you’re tougher. “Hindi, kaya ko ‘yan.” Whereas before, oh no, I hope that doesn’t happen to me because that will destroy me. Then, dinaanan mo na so you say, “Hindi, kaya ko ‘yan.” And that makes you tougher in that sense.

I don’t know about harder or softer. I think it makes you more sympathetic and to understand that, you know, okay, what you went through is hard. Everyone goes through that. Don’t think that anyone is exempted. Yeah. And everyone goes through that.

Even you, you live this privileged life and everything’s going your way. You never had to think about these deep things, you know. Now you do. ‘Yan na ‘yung buhay mo ngayon. And that’s a good thing. That’s a good thing because, you know, it’s important to live in the real world, not in this artificial world that doesn’t really have any…

It’s fun and it’s easy, but in terms of self-development, it doesn’t help you. It doesn’t help you at all. You learn from mistakes, right? You learn from hardship. And the same is true. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And that’s absolutely true.

So I use the word stronger more than anything else. And there are two things I say that many of the things you’re confronted with, mukhang mahirap, “Hindi, kaya ko ‘yan. Kaya ko ‘yan.” I did something already similar. I survived it eh. Kaya ko ‘yan, kaya ko ‘yan.

And the other thing that for me I find very gratifying, I know in my heart, I’m not a coward. You can challenge me in any way that you want. And I will stand up to that challenge. Hindi ako aatras.

What did Churchill say? Failure is not eternal. So you fail, okay, go, keep going. Keep going. Churchill also, I love Churchill. When the going gets tough, keep going.

VALENCIANO: Keep going.

Sir, it’s amazing that you speak about failure like you know it exists. You don’t want, nobody wants to fail. But somehow the way you look at it is from a different point of view which I believe all of us need to learn from this.

But I’ve always looked at something that you fail in as a tool that can make you stronger in the areas that you’re weak at. It reveals that which you’re weak in. And then you become stronger in it or you learn from it. And then you become a winner in the very same area that you failed in later on.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Absolutely. And the more painful the failure is, the better the lesson becomes. Because I don’t want to do that again. I do not want to have to suffer through that again. So, what are the things that I can do to prepare if that comes up, that happens again, I know na how to deal with it. So, basta you refuse to let anything, any circumstance destroy you.

VALENCIANO: That’s tough.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yeah, it can be. It depends on the life that you lead. I mean, some people’s lives are harder than others, but everyone gets tested in one way or another.

I mean, into every life, a little rain must fall, right? I don’t care how wealthy you are, I don’t care how powerful you are, you will be tested and it will be hard. And that defines you as a person, whether or not you stand, you rise up to the challenge and prevail. Survival is success.

VALENCIANO: That’s true.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yeah. And life is very, very difficult. Just to survive is fine. I’m happy with… buhay pa ako. I’m still here. I’m still here.

VALENCIANO: Yeah, there must be a reason why you’re still around.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yeah. I’m not going anywhere. I’m still here.

VALENCIANO: Yeah. And I like the fact that you added the word “faith”.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Oh, yes.

VALENCIANO: Because I think that’s really what’s meant to happen in the moments of shaking where people are brought to knock on the door of faith.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yeah.

VALENCIANO: Maybe it’s never been done by some of you before, but the President has had to knock on that door of faith.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Because when you go through something so traumatic, you have to remind yourself what sort of person am I. Because you’re taken out of a context that’s familiar, that you know, that you can handle, that you can go through, taken out into a totally different context.

I mean, it’s like taking somebody who works in the fields in, I don’t know, here in the Philippines, and bringing them to the boardroom in a corporation, a big, big corporation. Yeah, I don’t know what to do. I’m not trained for this. So you have to train yourself, and that’s—but to do that, you’re saying, what do I want?

Okay, then the question happens, what should I want? And it really goes down to, am I a good person or a bad person? What do I want to be? Do I want to be a bad person or do I want to be a good person? Do I want to help people or do I want to hurt them? Do I want to succeed and at the cost of everybody else suffering or I cannot accept that. I want to succeed, but everybody has to succeed with me.

You have to think through those things, which the previous years of your life you never had to think about. But you go through something like that, you really have to reexamine everything. You reexamine yourself. And the thing that you reexamine, in my case anyway, is reexamine the most is yourself. And you have to understand yourself.

And that’s where faith comes in. Because in the teachings that I’ve received in terms of religion, what are the things that are real lessons that for me were real, real? Oo nga, oo tama, tama, kailangan ‘yan. Kailangan ‘yan.

You have to live outside. You cannot be selfish. Tama, you cannot be selfish. Oo, you have to want a good result for everyone. Okay. You cannot sacrifice other people for your own success. Oo, tama ‘yan. All of those things. Where does that come from? From faith, from religious instruction, from your study.

And then I studied in a Benedictine school. They have a different approach to prayer. The way that we were encouraged to pray was in a very meditative sort of way. They would say, sit down, talk to your God. That’s how it says. So you sit down and talk to your God. And you did. You do.

You sit there. What do I do? Come on, come on, man, help me. What’s happening? I don’t get it anymore. [laughs] And I said, what do I do?. What do I do when you talk to your God. And in ways that you don’t expect, you get an answer. You do. You get an answer. It might be in the smile of a child, in a handshake, or big success, whatever. But you do get an answer. And then, okay, now. O sige tama, tama, yeah, tama ‘yan. ‘Yan ang gagawin ko.

VALENCIANO: Yeah. When God orchestrates, sometimes it’s orchestration that’s only meant to register in you. In others, they might go, huh? ‘Yun lang ang… no, but with you, it’s like, yeah, but this is how I was spoken to.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yeah, but that’s why it’s called faith. Stop trying to figure it out, okay? You know already what it is. I have a scientific bent, as they say. Yeah, don’t…

Like Einstein said, you know, I can’t put it in a formula that expresses changes in air pressure, but it doesn’t express what actually is happening. It’s the same thing. Stop trying to figure it out. It’s not logic, it’s faith. And you know what… You do, we all have consciences. And it’s really up to us to listen to our conscience.

VALENCIANO: Sir, with everything that you’ve shared, especially about that shaking moment in your life, was there a specific moment when you realized, I believe things are going to get, are things going to be okay? Was there a one moment or one season or one stretch of time or were there several events that brought you to that moment where you said, “Okay, I think things are going to be okay?” Sorry, is it another difficult question? [laughs]

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yeah, they’re all very difficult.

VALENCIANO: I’m so sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to put you through this.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: No, no, no. I mean, it’s fine. It’s a worthwhile exercise to be thinking about these things.

I would say, because, it was the end of our time in exile when I arrived in Manila. I remember it very, very well. It was the end of October of 1991. I was the first member of the family to arrive. And I remember they were warning us, kept warning us don’t try to go home because the security is a problem. You know, people are going to come after you. Nobody likes you anymore. You don’t have any…

And I arrived in the airport, and there’s thousands of people cheering us on. And I thought, okay, it’s not true what they’ve been telling us. You know, I’m… that’s why I wanted to come home because now I’m with Filipinos again. Now I’m back home, and it feels natural. Again, whereas the previous situation, I had a tough time understanding it and working it out. Okay, I understand the world again. I understand the world.

Doesn’t mean your life’s going to be easy and you know you don’t have to work anymore, you have plenty of money, you can do anything you want. That’s not what it meant. What it meant was, it felt natural again. Okay, I can handle this, this I can handle. I’m back in the Philippines, I’m around Filipinos, medyo alam ko ‘to. Kabisado ko ‘to, kaya ko ‘to—kaya ko na ‘to.

So, I think that was that, it was chaos by the way. In the airport, I remember you were there. Yeah, that was chaos. But the reaction of people was certainly not something I expected. I expected to creep in back into the airport and go to my friend’s house and you know, I don’t know, figure out what to do next.

But there were thousands of people and they were so enthusiastic upon my return that I was really… talagang nagulat ako. I didn’t think that it would be like that. Because even there were people telling us “huwag kayong uuwi o papatayin kayo.”

VALENCIANO: What is one thing that you hope your kids would inherit from you? And what do you hope they don’t inherit from you?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Oh, what I hope they inherit from me is the ability to be objective. I’ve always followed the advice – don’t make any decisions if you’re too sad, too happy, too anything. It’s just whatever, never trust your first instincts. Like, you know, something happens, ah you want to do something. Or oh, I’m sad, or you’re sad, you’re galit, you’re what. Never trust those first instincts.

And that’s advice I always give them. Think about it for three minutes more. The minute you think you know you want to do something, think about it for three minutes more. And that I think I’ve been able to instill in them. Okay, sige, allow yourself to be angry, allow yourself to be sad. But after you’ve done that, after you’ve indulged yourself, and you know, you have to let it out. I mean, if you feel something, you have to let it out. It’s also unhealthy to keep everything in.

But after that, then you start using your brain. You start thinking. If you remember, there was this film called The Network. I think a long time ago. And one of the scenes in there was this one of the girls who was there, who was working for the network guy, would wake up in the morning and cry like for three minutes. And then she’d stop and she’d go to work and say, “why do you do that?” “That’s all the crying I’m doing this day.” And that’s a sort of same idea – get it out of the way, and then start using your brain. I hope they get that.

What I, maybe the one thing that they shouldn’t get from me is being too much like that, being too cold and calculating. That’s maybe, that’s why Liza and I balance each other quite well because I tend towards that, and she tends towards being more listening to her emotions more. I distrust emotions sometimes and maybe that’s not such a great thing, but I’ve grown up that way.

VALENCIANO: But you know, sir, if I may just share this. But there were people who have come up to me and said, parang, how you are daw is not what they expected. They thought that you would be this kind of person, and they’re like, yeah, he’s that kind of person, and all.

And then they see this side of you that is totally opposite from what they hope you would be to further, you know, deepen their… their either galit or their tampo or whatever. But you’re showing a totally different side, which for me kind of lines up with everything you’ve just already shared and how that has molded you into becoming the man you are today.

Now, sir, again, this is the first time I’m actually talking to you like this. Everything is with tons of people around or what I see on television, you know, and television, I’m sorry, what I see online, you know. Sorry, my age is short. But so, when—the way you’re talking now and telling your kids how to, you know, give it a little more time and not to make a decision that’s driven by emotions because it can be the biggest regret you might have later on in life that you, out of the blue just decided because you’re angry or you’re tired of something and all.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Sure.

VALENCIANO: But I think it’s a great advice to give, you know, children.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: I think that people having expectations of you or judging you is a consequence of being in the public eye. That’s why you get it, that’s why I got it. That’s why I think everyone who—because you have a persona, you come out, you come out on stage, you sing, you dance, you do this, and you know, you get an impression “Oh, si Gary ganyan. Si Gary ganito.” You know, artista hindi ba. The role they play, wow ang bait ni… whoever it is. ‘Yun pala they’re not mabait at all in real life.

VALENCIANO: Yeah, correct. That’s what I’m saying.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yeah, so they have, and the opposite, of course. What a bad guy. You know they say, laging kontrabida sa sine ‘yun pala ang bait-bait. So I guess it’s just a consequence because people make judgment. It’s a natural thing. It’s not something, it’s not bad or good. But you know, you see the person, and what you see is how you judge that person or how you—not judge. Judge is parang you’re saying yes, wrong or bad or good.

It’s more like that’s the kind of person that they are. But it’s not. It’s what you’re presenting when you’re in public. And what you are when you’re talking to your children or your wife or your friend might be very, very different. Sometimes it’s not, but it might be. And those of us who cultivate a public persona, that’s a consequence of that, because you say, look, I’m a serious person.

But then when you’re having dinner with friends, you’re just laughing all the time, or you’re making jokes about everybody, and it’s very different pala. But it’s not mutually exclusive. You can be both, you can be both. If you don’t know how to manage that, you drive yourself a little crazy. You have to know that, okay, I’m on. Okay, I’m not on. You must know that.

Although there are people I know who are always on, you know. But that’s just the way they are and that’s okay too. There’s nothing wrong with that. What you see is what you get, kind of thing. Yeah.

VALENCIANO:There. Which is basically what people would rather have. Parang ‘yung kung anong makita, ‘yun na ‘yun.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: But you can’t blame them. I mean, you can’t blame people because that’s the only basis that they have. It’s what they read in the paper or what they see on Facebook or they see you in terms of, you know, see you on stage. They have nothing else to form an opinion or a reaction on. So, and you know, sometimes it’s a little frustrating because, no, I’m not like that at all.

VALENCIANO:Yes, parang product of circumstance na lang na parang eh nagkataon na Presidente siya, ito ‘yung nangyayari. So, you base it on that.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Oo. And you’d like for people to understand, you know, but it can’t be done. You cannot explain to everyone exactly, you cannot have dinner with everyone in a relaxed setting and then, oh, this is what they probably—ganito pala sila. Well, you can’t do that so, you just… That’s… I think the important thing is to know when you’re on and when you’re not on. Once you got that serve  straight in your head, then it’s better, then it’s easier.

VALENCIANO: Sir, there’s a difference between what you are and who you really are, you know.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Sure.

VALENCIANO: Do you still get those moments in life, both as a President and as a husband and as a father or as a friend, where you get, because I was just going to ask you know, sometimes the turning point in one’s life is not one dramatic event, okay, but it can come through a phone call or a conversation.

Was there any moment like that with you, or are there moments that still are, oh you know, you come home, you’re in the Palace, and then you get a message, and it could be even just one message. You know, it could be from a friend calling you, your name, you know, you don’t want to be called President by your closest friends. Does it — do you still get moments like that?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yeah, I do. I do. And I think I value them because you—it’s either you learn something new generally about yourself or you’re reminded of what you in fact are, you know. Don’t put airs, huwag kang mayabang. Relax ka lang. You’re not that great o you are that great, or whatever. But it reminds you that no, no, no, that’s not what I’m about or oo nga no, bago ‘yun ah.  Pag-isipan natin ‘yun, baka puwede, puwedeng gamitin ‘yun ‘di ba.

You learn something, or you’re reminded of something that those are for me very, very important moments. It all comes down to getting your feet back on the ground, really. So you learn something because, oh, that’s what reality is. You know, what I thought my reality is like this, you were wrong. It’s like this pala or ‘yun na nga you’re reminded, no, no, that’s not, that’s not… “pare, relax, ka lang,” ‘di ba.

Or, don’t be, don’t, don’t, no…  you’ll be fine, you’ll be fine. Things like that, you’re reminded, oo nga kaya ko ‘yan. Okay lang. So, it’s very important for me to have those moments.

VALENCIANO: Sir, if there’s one word that I’ve heard used a couple of times to describe you, especially being the President of the Philippines, is the word with a ano ha, mentioned in a way, na ah ganito pala siya, which is the word “compassionate.” And parang, “you know, alam mo, what I noticed with the President, he’s compassionate pala.”

So, in other words, they already had a, they probably already had a certain expectation of how you’d be. But do you think that adversity has helped make you this kind of President, a compassionate President?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: I don’t know about the kind of president, but the kind of person you are. Yeah, that’s what makes you. Again, it’s the hard lessons that make you better. It’s not the easy lessons that make you better, it’s the hard ones that make you better.

And I think for me, going back to faith, I think the ultimate lesson of Jesus Christ is humility. Be humble. You’re not perfect. You’re flawed in very serious ways. Remember that.

So you have to work very, very hard to get it right, to treat the person properly, to come up with ways to help, to get outside yourself, you know. Be humble. That for me is the greatest lesson that you can learn is huwag kang mayabang, at saka it’s not the yabang that you talk about, like, you know, there’s funny mayabang, ‘di ba? Ang lakas ng hangin nito. But ‘yung mayabang, when you seriously think you’re better than everybody else.

The minute you do that, oh, you’re dead, you’re doomed. The minute you start thinking, mas magaling ako diyan ‘di ba? That’s a fatal flaw that will ruin everything. And that’s why the compassion, if indeed there is, and I’m really quite flattered that that’s the description that people make of me, comes from God. Is it, you know, there but for the grace of God go I.

You know, nakakaawa naman ‘to, tulungan mo ‘di ba? Ah, sorry na lang, hindi puwedeng ganoon. Hindi puwedeng ganoon. Huwag kang magkakamali, pagka hindi mo naintindihan—if you did not learn the lesson that this poor person is going through and if you do not empathize and sympathize, then you’re going to get it wrong.

You’re going to get it wrong because then you start making an image of yourself to yourself that is mistaken because you are not. You are a human being. You are not perfect. You are not better than everybody else. You are not greater than anybody else. You are not… You are just… and everything you have in your life, you are so lucky to have, you know. You were not entitled to this. Sinusuwerte ka, remember that you’re lucky. You’re blessed.

VALENCIANO: Yes, you are. That’s a perfect way to put it because others may be more popular than others, but popularity doesn’t mean better.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: No, no. Not at all. No. Well, in the sense that for you, you’re a performer. The better performer has more fans, right? In that sense, yes. But it makes you better performing, doesn’t necessary make you are a better person.

That doesn’t necessarily translate into that. That’s what you have to watch out for. That’s why to delineate or to have a very clear understanding of… if you’re in public life, especially if your public persona and your actual self, having a good grasp of that, that’s important. That’s what keeps you, you have to stay normal, you know.

Don’t think of yourself as somebody superior in ways. You know, I play basketball better than him. That’s fine. But I’m a better person. Or they’re not worth my time, or they’re not worth my emotion, or they’re not worth doing something. Everybody’s worth something. Everybody’s good at something. Everybody’s worthwhile. And many of them are more worthwhile than you. Remember that.

VALENCIANO: Hindi lang nila ipinagmamalaki, pero actually. Yeah, I got you.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yeah. You can make fun and you know, be mayabang in a funny way, but you have to be, when you’re sitting in your room alone, you have to remember you’re just one of millions, billions of people that have lived on this earth, and you may be special in some ways, but so is everybody else special in their own way.

VALENCIANO: Sir, with everything that you’re talking about, it’s obvious that the person who you are has learned a lot from what’s happened in the past.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: I hope so.

VALENCIANO:I believe so. What matters to you now that didn’t matter as much when you were younger?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Oh, actually, I don’t know. It’s just become getting things right. It’s not that it didn’t matter before. I always wanted to get things right, but it matters more now. Because it’s not just about me anymore. And like I said earlier, decisions I make while I’m in this position affect many, many people. So you have to absolutely get it right.

And in my line of work, it’s very rare you have a perfect answer that if you do this, everything will be fine ‘di ba. There are unintended consequences. There are things that you cannot anticipate. But you try really, really, really hard to get it right.

Again, one of the greatest pieces of advice that I ever got was that always work for the ideal. You know you’ll never get there, but work for the ideal. Always work for the ideal.

Always try to get it right. Because otherwise, I think it’s ingrained into me because I’ve been in public life and I view myself as a public servant. I serve.

And so, to serve well, you have to get it right. And to do that involves many, many things. First of all, it has to have that foundation of pure humility. You don’t know everything. So, go and learn. Go and study. Talk to people who know more than you do. You know, do the hard stuff. Don’t just pound things off and say, “Puwede na ‘yan, puwede na ‘yan.”

No, no, no. Work for the ideal. Always try to keep making it better, making it better, making it better. Even if it’s just little things, all of those things add up and make things better, make things better, make things better. And that for me is a guiding principle in all that I do.

And not only in work, even when it comes to your dealings with family, your dealings with friends, your dealings with people, your dealings in your everyday life. Try to do the best, always do the best. Don’t be mediocre. Don’t allow yourself to be satisfied with an average result or a mediocre result.

Always be, you know, what comes into me is the Japanese culture. They turn everything into an art form, they won’t leave anything alone. Everything, this can be better. You can make this better. Puwede pang pagandahin. You know, if we age it for 20 years and then bring it back, you know, they go to such length.

VALENCIANO: Yes. In fact, I think, but in their pottery, if it’s cracked, they’ll find a way how to fix the crack na makikita mo pero ang ganda ng pagkaayos.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Hindi ba. But have you seen the pottery that’s really, really, it’s very rough? But it’s gorgeous. It’s beautiful. And I don’t know how they, how do they, how do you get to that point?

But it’s that kind of thinking that it could, you know, we could make this just that little bit better. We could make it better, we could make it better, we can make it better work, work for the ideal. That’s the motivation, that’s the drive that should always be there. Make it work for the ideal. You may not get there. Only God’s perfect, but you know, try. [laughs]

VALENCIANO: Yeah, and God’s perfection, sometimes He uses the most imperfect beings to complete something that He wants done excellently and perfectly.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yeah. One of those things that I heard that really just took me aback. You know, it says, you know, some people have the idea that when you go, when you’re praying or you’re trying to, you’re in prayer, you’re meditating, whatever. And then you say, you know, I’m trying to do God’s work, I’m trying to be good, I’m trying to follow the teachings of my religion. And you say, because I want to, because, you know, this is my religion and so I should follow it.

And what somebody once said, it was a priest who said it in one of his homilies, he says, “Remember, you didn’t choose God, God chose you.” And that again like it took me aback. “Oo nga ‘no.” So I have to do this. It’s not that I chose to do this, no, no, no. You to have to do this eh. Sinabihan ka, ito ‘yung mga kailangan mong gawin. It’s your duty. It’s your duty to yourself. It’s your duty to humanity.

And, you know, it’s not something that you, no… I could do it. I could not do it. No, no, no. You have no choice. You’ve been chosen to do that. So do it. And that also, you know, keeps you on an even keel.

VALENCIANO: Yes. Oh, yes. Definitely. See, you know, there’s one word that you’ve repeated several times which is the word “learn”. Okay. To learn, to study, to learn. And you know what they say that sometimes the hardest thing to do is to unlearn.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Oh, yes. So sure.

VALENCIANO: Right? So rather than learn. So I’m not here to ask you what’s the hardest thing you’ve learned. I’m here to ask you what’s the biggest thing you’ve had to unlearn.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: The world does not revolve around you. That was that for me. Because when you’re a kid, especially anak ka ng Presidente, the world revolves around you. Everybody around you is trying to please you. Everybody around you is worried, is making sipsip or being nice or whatever, you know.

Maybe they’re just sincere and they just like you. But you learn, for me, that’s what maturity is, is to understand that the world does not revolve around you. You know, if you do well in the world, you know, there’s an element of luck in there, you’re blessed.

So, you know, take it that way. And you — the world does not owe you anything, they don’t, they don’t owe the good. The world does not owe you good times, it does not owe you comfort, it does not owe you anything. You have to work for everything.

You have to strive very hard to get what it is that you feel are important to you. It’s not going to come. Nothing ever came by itself. Nothing worthwhile ever came easily.

That’s what my experience is. Nothing worthwhile came easily. Everything, you have to work at it. Sometimes you have to work very hard. Sometimes you don’t have to work that hard. Suwerte ka, you get it.

But, that for me is the… I guess it’s a form of maturity is that, you know, when you’re a child, everything does revolve around you. But once you have some experience, you come to that lesson very, very quickly. Oo nga, they don’t owe me anything. They don’t owe me anything. If you get something good, you have to have earned it. It’s not going to come.

If somehow it comes to you, something good comes to you, unearned, it’s not that valuable. And like they say, easy come, easy go. If it came easily, that’s going to go away easily too. But if you worked at it and you really sacrificed to get to that point, that’s not going to be. No one can take away from you anymore because it belongs to you. You own it. You earned it. I’m not talking about material things. I’m talking about greater, more important things.

And if you’ve earned something, you’ve earned the knowledge, you’ve earned the experience, you know, through sacrifice, through hard work, no one can take that away from you. That belongs to you forever and ever and ever until the day you die.

And in fact, if you do it right, you can actually pass it on to your children, these lessons that you’ve learned. So, yes, that’s for me, that for me was life changing to say, oo nga ‘no, that doesn’t belong to me. I’m not entitled to any. Ang lalim na nito ha. This is deep, man. [laughs]

VALENCIANO: No, kasi, sir, as somebody who has never spoken to a President, these are some of the questions I’ve always wanted to hear a person of leadership, not of a company, but of an entire nation, I want to hear from his heart, you know. And so, when you say people around you, not just family, but basically the entire nation, when people criticize you, are you able to separate the criticism of what you do from who you are?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: In a sense, no, because I take my work personally. It’s important to me. I get happy if I get it right, I am sad if I… and people that do something wrong, you get angry because I take it personally.

Because I think if you don’t take it personally, you’re not doing everything that you can.

‘Yung talagang lampas na, you know, you go the extra mile because it’s personal eh. It means something to you. ‘Pag hindi, nagagalit ka, pagka hinaharang ka, naiinis ka, ‘di ba? It has to be personal.

But then there’s that three-minute rule that I have. So nagalit ka na, okay, it matters to me. So, let’s find out how to fix it. So, it turns out that it made me angry, okay, or made me happy or it made me sad. Okay, now we know it’s important to you. So, let’s get it right.

I always say also, you must indulge your emotions also. You cannot just tap, tap, tap them down and say that they pretend they don’t exist. You have to allow yourself to feel.

It’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to be happy. It’s okay to be frustrated. It’s okay. But don’t let that be the guide of what it is you end up doing. Because emotions are—we live hopefully.

VALENCIANO: You can make crazy decisions when it’s emotionally triggered.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yeah. Kasi it doesn’t come from an examination of the actual state of what it is that you’re dealing with. It comes from, I don’t know, something else. So, it has its place. It has its place.

That’s why I make my… if it’s important, I take it personally. You know, it’s like a thing against me personally, me as a person, when it doesn’t go well or it is mistaken or whatever.

Because if it’s not personal, maybe I don’t know if I’m using the right term, but if it’s not personal, your heart and soul is not in it, and your heart and soul has to be in it for you to know that you’re actually doing everything that you can do.

So, you want to succeed in something, you have to do everything, you have to make sacrifices, you have to work hard, you have to be very focused, you have to, you know, but only because it matters to you. And the only things that matter to you are personal, are things that you take personally.

But you know, I’m not saying it’s just my life. You know, if something bad happens to the Philippines, I take it personally. I take it as a personal affront that these people are treating Filipinos that way. Parang kapatid ko ‘yan, parang anak ko ‘yan, Hindi mo puwedeng gawin ‘yan. You cannot do that. I get it… You know, it’s personal to me.

But my reaction is not going to go there and hit the person. You know, try and figure out, okay, okay, let’s do something para hindi na mangyari ‘yan. Let’s protect these people or let’s give them an opportunity or, you know, any of that.

That’s why, also, even if it sometimes it hurts, but you have to take it in talaga. You have to be real about things. You cannot just, ah trabaho lang ‘yan ‘di ba. O sige. Well, kung trabaho lang ‘yan, then it’s not important to you. That’s why, I guess, the difference between in public service and being in a corporate environment. Because corporation, if you’re the CEO of a big corporation, you’re successful if you make a lot, a lot, a lot of money. Okay, that’s simple. It’s simple.

But as a public servant, it’s much harder. It’s much more… what’s the nebulous? It’s harder to, you know to be… it’s not. These are intangibles that you’re trying to figure out.

So, and in my view, you have to know, the only way you’re satisfied with what you’re doing is you have to know that you have done absolutely everything that you possibly can.

You have made all the sacrifices that you have to make. You have taken all the hits that you have to. Masusugatan ka talaga but you have to be willing to do that. Otherwise, you’re not doing enough. You have to… it has to be hard. If it’s not hard, you’re not doing enough. You’re not working hard enough. You’re not thinking about things enough. You’re not caring enough. Because if you’re caring enough, it hurts if it doesn’t go right or if there’s a problem.

VALENCIANO: Sir, I only have one more thing to ask of you before we wrap this up.

There are many who are watching now who are looking at you like this or are looking at you like this or are looking at you like, you know. But being the President is that you know what many people are going through right now. May I ask you, how are you, sir?

PRESIDENT MARCOS: I have been blessed with the greatest privilege that anybody can be given. And that’s to be able to, you know, when you see something going on, you can actually do something about it. Whereas before, it’s oh, God, that’s terrible. Oh, poor people. Now you can actually do something about it. And there’s no greater work than to help other people for me. There’s nothing better than you can be doing than to help other people.

And I get to help millions of people. And come on, how lucky can you get, right? To be able to help many people. That for me is still, talagang I cannot believe that I have that capability. I’m able to do that.

And so, in many ways, I mean, it’s very hard and, you know, time is not your own. These are the sacrifices you make. But again, they pale in comparison to what you are actually able to do, and the things that you were able to… It is the greatest privilege for anyone who has staked their life out in public service.

It is absolutely the greatest privilege that you can ever have is to actually serve and to serve well and to serve many. And, you know, that for me, and I still… that’s why when I say, oo nga naging Presidente nga pala ako.

But part of that is that I cannot believe how lucky I am and how privileged I am to have lived the life. Okay, the life was hard, but think about where you ended up. Think about, you know, what all of those trials and tribulations led you to and then made you.

And I still, there are many times I still say, I can’t believe that I got this lucky. I can’t believe that people trust me this much. I cannot believe that I can do the things that I can do as President to make life better for other people.

And for the people that I most love in the world, Filipinos. You know, it’s not just my family, all Filipinos. I can help Filipinos. Can you imagine? Not just one group, not just one place, not just one air, not just over one thing, but in everything.

I mean, it’s, it has a… there’s a factor of intimidation, they’ll be whoa, this is a big job. This is a big job. But you know, if — you can work it. You have the means to at least move things forward.

Maybe, you know, there’s no such thing in my line of work where you say, “my job’s done. Tapos na ako.” It never ends. But then also, the things that you can do never end either. So that balances it out.

And that’s much more valuable than the difficulties that you go through. Is that once in a while, you know, you change the person’s life. You put a smile on a kid’s face. I don’t know. You gave somebody a second chance. You created an opportunity that didn’t exist before. You changed the way people think. You know, stop being, people are apathetic, they don’t care.

No. Remember, this is the Philippines. You have to work hard. These are Filipinos. Kababayan mo ito. To get people to think that way, to help people get to that point. That is enormous.

VALENCIANO: You know, it’s hard because you’re the President, and there are so many things to tackle with the amount of time you have left. And to see you saying, I’m blessed, I’m lucky, I’m gonna be serving many and trying to create even little changes, which end up becoming big changes in people’s lives.

Sir, as we close up, can I just, you know, for the many lives that are currently being shaken, for whatever reason, whether it be financial or health or emotional, you know, which a lot of people are, young people are going through.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Yes, I know. It’s a big problem.

VALENCIANO: I know many would be encouraged to hear words from their President just speaking into their hearts. And before we close, I’m giving you the mic. You have the camera. You can speak into their lives with whatever comes into your heart, because it seems like everything you’ve shared right now has already come from that, from your heart.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Well, I just hope that people realize that, and people know, and that people feel that what we are doing is right, that what we’re doing is for the better, and to understand that at least myself, the people around me, we are sincere in trying to make this country better.

We are not working to make ourselves, to make pasikat, to show off. We’re working… What we do is because we think it’s the best thing for Filipinos and for the Philippines.

And of course, it’s often open to misinterpretation. But that’s part of the job. That’s okay. That’s okay. But hopefully, we get to the point where people understand. Okay, we may not agree with what he’s doing, but he’s doing his best. He believes in what he’s doing. He’s only doing it. That he’s our President, he’s only doing the things he does because he truly believes in his heart of hearts that that is the best thing to do for Filipinos, that is the best thing to do for the Philippines.

I hope, I hope that we get to that point. Once I got to that… If I get to that point, then I think in a very civil way I will feel I have succeeded.

VALENCIANO: There is so much that has been shared today, and so much that, like our President, there’s so much that I have to learn. There’s so much that I’m going to reflect on with everything that has been shared. Para sa lahat ng mga laging nanonood ng Unshaken, the stories of grit and grace.

I know… I know, and he knows that not all of you support him. Ako nga ‘di ba sabi ni First Lady maka-pink ako at lahat. But see, even the smile on his face, he knows it’s not, there’s a lot more to the nation, us as a people.

There’s a lot of hope that he has in his heart that even in these last few years that he has left, he’s going to continue, regardless of what challenges may come up in the future.

Friends, I want to thank you for joining us here. And my final word on being shaken is there will be things, there will be people, there will be situations, there will be things that will have to be unlearned and shaken away so that what remains is not what you are, but who you really are.

And that only comes when shaking occurs. We don’t know when it’s going to happen. We can’t choose what is shaken away. But there is one word that our President has used, and that’s faith.

And when we’re able to come before our God, who again can orchestrate things like putting a President, making a President out of somebody who never wanted to become one, that’s all God’s orchestration.

Now, whether you agree with our President, whether you support him or not, he is who he is to the nation. After him, we don’t know what’s going to be next. But if we do have faith, then whatever shaking comes our way, it opens up, our willingness to allow God to orchestrate. And when he orchestrates, it may be different music to our ears, but it will be music that we need to hear. It will be music that we need to get into our souls. And it will be music that will move us in a way that moves us forward.

And moving forward always means moving upward as well, regardless of the challenges that may come.

VALENCIANO: Thank you so much for joining us today on Unshaken, the stories of grit and grace with yours truly, Gary V., and my special guest for today, none other than the President of the Republic of the Philippines, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Thank you, Gary. Thank you so very much. Thank you for everyone. Thank you.

VALENCIANO: Really, really appreciate  this. . Thank you.

See you guys again next Monday on here, Unshaken, the stories of grit and grace.

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