BILOG ang bola. Irony in three words.
I’ve heard and said it many times – an expression of hope, in a situation that has turned hopeless.
It is sad, isn’t it?
Which makes me wonder: how was it meant to be used the first time it was uttered or penned?
Because on the surface, it is empowering. It speaks about fighting chance, like something you embrace and internalize.
Now when you hear it over a huddle, you can almost see the words hover aimlessly, listlessly, above the bowed heads of dejected players, three words tossed away by skeptical minds that question it, and refused by cynical hearts that won’t believe in it.
These are the words you find, scraping the bottom of the barrel when there is nothing left but despair, discouraged beyond consolation.
It is the coach’s way of helping players carry themselves with dignity in the face of futility.
The phrase is now a cluster of empty words, and I wonder when it lost its fighting spirit and became nothing more than lip service.
My guess? General experience, beyond playing sports. We lose in life every day, even the fights we thought we should’ve won. And so we became cynical of the improbable.
When we fail over and over again, the animist in us assumes control, relieving the weary realistic voice in our heads, and leaving our fate at the hands of an unseen deity, hoping a Hail Mary will find the end zone. Our recourse is the good graces of a metaphysical intercessor who might favor us for past acts of devotion.
We say bilog ang bola out of decorum because it is indelicate to speak plainly, especially if the truth is harsh. What’s a little white lie if the uncertainty of how things will turn out puts it in a gray area?
And because of that, the phrase has been added to the list of things we say that we don’t mean, and I think we have enough of those.
So let’s reclaim it.
It’s good for us to nurture new habits, and use them to replace bad ones.
Let’s start with something as simple as believing in the words we say. We should mean what we say, or just be quiet.
We might not know it yet, but we need inspiration now more than ever, because in sports as in life, we are challenged by younger, faster, taller, stronger opponents. The gaps separating our reality from our dreams are becoming wider and the obstacles we have to hurdle to be able to rise from our present situation are getting higher.
We dismiss the proverb because bilog ang bola is just words, and yet the power of language is found in how words affect how we see the world.
The world as we know it, according to Renate Giesbrecht’s seminar paper on The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, is “largely predetermined by the language of our culture.”
That said, bilog ang bola should stop acting as a trigger to defeatism when we say it.
On the contrary, it should empower us. Return to affecting your fortunes, not just when it is easy, but more importantly, when a lot is going against you.
If we can find it in ourselves to believe that a low-ranked NBA Playoffs team we root for can go all the way and win it all, we can also mine that long-buried sense of optimism and use it in our uphill battles.
The next time you say bilog ang bola, say it with conviction and let it empower you. Say it like how Narda says “Darna!” Say it the way Gilas fans scream “Puso!”
Say it like a prayer; match your devotion to your god with faith in yourself, and scream it out loud enough to wake the hero inside.
If there is a part of life where we can learn to believe again in the impossible, it is in sports.
And maybe we can start winning again.
In this game called life, always remember: bilog ang bola.