In the wake of Typhoon Enteng, three cheers for Filipino ingenuity! Yet, let’s also raise a glass to our forgetfulness. Oh, the rain falls and with it, the floods come—a cycle as predictable as the seasons. But with every deluge, we witness the same spectacle: the stubborn refusal to leave homes threatened by the rising waters, the bravery of volunteers, the politicians who seize the moment to showcase their concern, and the nation of Filipinos who, despite it all, greet the aftermath with renewed hope. And so, with a cheer, we say, “Hooray for Filipino courage! Let us celebrate the enduring spirit of Bayanihan that lives in our hearts.”
But, my friends, let us pause for a moment. For isn’t this celebration tinged with a kind of madness? A madness that recurs, year after year, with the monsoon’s return. A madness that, like a beloved telenovela, plays out in an endless loop: the rain, the flood, the resilience, the hope—and the inevitable forgetfulness that follows.
The rains are a reminder, a harbinger of that same cycle that we know so well. Each year, we sing the same song, we dance the same dance. The “flood” problem, so ingrained in our national psyche, has become the perennial drama in which we Filipinos are both the actors and the audience. We watch ourselves on the stage, admiring our strength, our resourcefulness, our ability to endure. But the curtain never falls, and the plot never thickens. We are trapped in the act of coping, as if coping alone were the grand finale.
Let us not mistake coping for triumph. Indeed, there is something admirable in our ability to smile through the storm, to find joy in the darkest of days. But is it not also a kind of surrender? A resignation to the same, unchanging fate? We have become too skilled at survival, so much so that we have forgotten how to aspire for something more—something beyond merely getting by.
In this land, where the typhoon is as much a part of life as the sun, have we not grown complacent? Have we not mistaken endurance for excellence, resilience for success? We look at the smiling faces of those who have weathered the storm and say, “There, that is the Filipino spirit!” And indeed, it is. But we forget that the Filipino spirit is capable of more than just enduring. It is capable of transforming, of overcoming not just the storm, but the conditions that make the storm so devastating.
And so, we return to our telenovela. The floodwaters rise, the actors take their places, and the familiar scenes unfold. But at some point, surely, we must grow tired of this unending drama. Surely, we must ask ourselves: is there not more to life than this? Are we not weary of the perpetual floods, the politicians who masquerade as saviors, the annual toll of lives lost?
Coping is a necessary first step, but it is not the destination. We must learn to move beyond coping, to reject the mediocrity that comes with simply surviving. We must demand more of ourselves, and of those who lead us. We must remember that we are not just characters in a play, but the authors of our own fate.
And so, as we suffer once again yet another flood, with the winds of Typhoon Enteng howling through our streets and the waters rising around us, we find ourselves not merely amid a natural disaster, but in the heart of a cultural one—a cycle of coping and forgetting as old as the rains themselves. For this is our story, year after year, storm after storm.
Let the rains fall again, but let us not just cheer for the Filipino spirit, for this is old hat. This time, let us also remember, even at the risk of being Kabisote. Let us remember that we have the power to change the script, to write a new story—one where we do more than cope. One where we conquer.
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