By Reisha Mae F. Valdez, UC student
For nearly a month, as the rain kept falling, I found myself wondering why we are so quick to praise people for surviving what they should never have been forced to endure.
We call a mother resilient when she carries her child through floodwater. We call a father resilient when he returns to a house covered in mud and starts rebuilding with whatever he has left. We call families strong when they sleep on classroom floors after losing their homes. Somehow, we have become comfortable turning suffering into a compliment.
But what if resilience is no longer something to celebrate? What if it has become the word we use when we have run out of questions to ask those responsible?
For days, heavy rain has battered communities across the country. Floodwaters swallowed roads and homes, while landslides threatened families on vulnerable slopes. Schools and covered courts meant for learning were turned into temporary shelters. People left their homes carrying whatever they could save, unsure of what would remain when they returned.
Then, as the rain weakens, the story slowly disappears from the headlines.
The water goes down, but the consequences do not. Families return to houses filled with mud and damaged belongings. Parents worry about how to replace what they lost. Children return to schools that may have been used as evacuation centers. For some, recovery can take months or even years.
And then we tell them to be resilient.
Perhaps this is where we need to ask what resilience has cost us.
The Philippines is no stranger to typhoons, floods, and landslides. We cannot stop every storm, but disasters do not become tragedies simply because rain falls. The damage is often made worse by poor drainage, unsafe structures, neglected waterways, inadequate evacuation facilities, and infrastructure that fails when people need it most.
These are not acts of nature alone. Some are failures of preparation.
When a bridge becomes unsafe, we should ask why it was allowed to reach that condition. When communities repeatedly flood, we should ask whether flood-control systems were properly designed, built, and maintained. When billions are allocated for projects meant to protect the public, people deserve to know where every peso went.
This is not about blaming every government worker or pretending every disaster can be prevented. It is about remembering what public service means. Officials are entrusted with resources because they are entrusted with lives. Their responsibility does not begin when cameras arrive after a disaster. It begins while the skies are still clear, when there is still time to prepare.
Citizens also have responsibilities. We must protect waterways, follow evacuation orders, and help our communities prepare. But accountability cannot be placed entirely on people who are already struggling to survive.
We have praised Filipino resilience for generations. Perhaps it is time to praise something else: preparation, competence, honesty, and accountability.
A mother should not have to be called strong because no one built a safer place for her children. A father should not have to be admired for rebuilding the same house after every storm. And a nation should not measure its strength by how many times its people can survive the same failure.
The next time the rain comes, I hope we stop asking, “How resilient are Filipinos?” I hope we ask something harder: Who was supposed to make sure they did not have to be this resilient in the first place?
