When I was a boy, Tatay kept a small wooden chest under his workbench. It wasn’t much to look at—corners dented, brass dull with fingerprints—but it held a kind of gravity that made me stand straighter whenever he slid it open. Inside were simple things: a folding rule, a stub of pencil sharpened with a knife, a handful of screws rescued from old furniture, and a paper label that only said, “Ingatan.”
Back then I thought treasure was gold and glitter. Years later, with sawdust in my hair and deadlines in my pocket, I understand why Tatay guarded that chest. It wasn’t the objects. It was what they unlocked—habits, really. Measure twice. Keep what is still useful. Fix what can be fixed. Leave a space for the next day’s work so tomorrow won’t have to start from zero.
These days my own “chest” looks different. It’s the cabinet shop at 6 a.m., quiet before the routers wake. It’s a price sheet updated honestly. It’s a team that knows a straight line is a promise, not a suggestion. It’s the way I label parts so the young ones won’t get lost in a sea of panels, and the way I teach them to align edges by feel, not only by sight. Treasure is the time saved when a process is clear. Treasure is the peace that comes when a client opens a door and it closes with a whisper.
We grow up thinking treasure must be rare. But the rarest thing, I’ve learned, is consistency. The chest under Tatay’s bench didn’t make him rich; it made him dependable. And dependability—measured in millimeters, paid in trust—is the kind of wealth that compounds quietly.
Someday my children will open my chest—whatever shape it takes—and I hope they find the same things Tatay left me: a pencil worn to the truth, a rule that doesn’t bend, and a note that says, “Ingatan.” Not because the tools are fragile, but because the work they enable is sacred: to build something square, honest, and meant to last—like love, like family, like home.
Originally published on Benjie's Bench - Measuring Life's lessons in Millimeters