17/08/2026
๐๐๐๐๐๐ผ๐๐ | The Country that Learned to Swim
One of the many qualities that us Filipinos take pride in is resilienceโkatatagan;
the strength to endure, to stand again after hardships,
to gather the pieces of what was lost
and build something from scratch.
The Philippines survived many typhoons,
We are, after all, one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world.
We have watched storms tear through our towns like angry hands,
ripping roofs and leaving walls exposed to the sky.
Fields that promised a harvest disappear beneath restless brown waters,
and streets we once walked on became rivers,
carrying away the little things that made a house feel like home.
Our parents held our last belongings above the water,
as if a dry bag of clothes could preserve a piece of the life we had before the rain.
Then, the water retreats,
leaving behind brown, stubborn lines on our wallsโ
a mark of how high the suffering reached.
We tried to gather what was left of yesterday,
and call it enough for tomorrow.
We sweep away the mud and floodwater,
dry our clothes, salvage what we can,
and begin again.
โFilipinos are resilientโ
And perhaps that is true.
But there is an irony hidden inside that praiseโ
something we refuse to accept,
one that sits in our throats like a lump we cannot swallow.
Because resilience may be admirable,
but it should never be an excuse
for the suffering we are repeatedly left to endure.
We are admired for how we rise,
But rarely asked why we are always made to fall
The President who waves hopeful words once promised us,
"Aangat ang bukas sa Bagong Pilipinas.โ
but for us Filipinos,
The only thing that kept on rising was the water.
So what does it really mean to rise
when some of us are still waist-deep
in the very waters we were promised would never reach us?
When will we stop calling it resilience
and start asking why survival
has become something Filipinos are expected to be good at?
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