Is Filipino Resiliency Overrated?
As far as I can recall, I was in sixth grade when I first encountered the word “resilience”. I often heard it from the live news telecast or read it in the newspapers especially when there are typhoons, wars and conflicts, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. I tried to discover the meaning of that word since it seems to conjure a really positive vibe or attitude about the Filipino people. I came to know that the trait of resiliency is somewhat comparable to the pliancy of a bamboo. Resiliency is often likened to the admirable characteristic of the bamboo that bends to the strength of the wind and its ability to bounce back to its original state. Thus, when the term is used to define the Filipino people, indeed, …show more content…
It is a given fact that Philippines undergo several typhoons every year but it seems that we are not learning from it. Looking back, when you compare the casualties of catastrophic typhoons that hit the Philippines the trends seem to show that we are not really prepared to face these disasters. For instance, on 23 September 2009, Ondoy affected almost 993,227 families, making it to become one of the worst natural disasters in the Philippines in terms of number of people affected. Out of this affected people, 464 were killed and 529 were injured and a total of 15,798 families were temporarily displaced and took refuge in evacuation centers (Olan, 2014). On the same note, on the 15th day of 2011, Sendong hit the northern part of Mindanao and killed almost 1,439 people. The estimated cost of damages by Typhoon Sendong amounted to P999, 946,415 or close to 1 billion and left 65,067 families homeless (Rappler, 2011). Lastly, Typhoon Haiyan, dubbed as the strongest typhoon to land in the recorded history, affected almost 16 million people, leaving in its wake 6,300 deaths, 4.1 million displaced people and 1.1 million houses damaged (USAID, 2014). When you make sense of these numbers, one can readily grasp that we are not resilient in the face of disasters, we are ill-prepared. Knowing that Philippines is prone to typhoons and that data showed that thousands of people die, why is the government not putting …show more content…
When we have problems, we always paint our faces with smile and exude positivity in order to get over with our problems. More often, we do not dwell on problems, we move on. In times disasters and calamities, Filipinos are ingenious in finding ways to make their lives better such that we just build a raft in order to help us wade in flood waters, we wrap our shoes with plastic in order not to get wet and we even make business out of the calamities we faced (i.e. cellphone and laptop charging during typhoon Haiyan, selling ice cold water, etc.). There is nothing wrong in doing these things, however, along the process we forget to seek solutions to these bigger problems. We learned that ours is a hopeless case and just all we do is cope and wait for these problems to pass. We have not become resilient in the face of disaster but we have become apathetic. More often than not, we just accept the status quo, thinking that we cannot do anything to change it. In the context of disasters, we do not thoroughly demand state support and assistance because we were used to the fact that we solve problems on our own. We are becoming helpless when disasters come, not resilient. We just mask such concept of powerlessness under the guise of resilience. The question that still remains to be answered is: Are we really resilient people? They say we just laugh and smile our problems off. On the hindsight, perhaps we just smile because that is just
As far as I can recall, I was in sixth grade when I first encountered the word “resilience”. I often heard it from the live news telecast or read it in the newspapers especially when there are typhoons, wars and conflicts, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. I tried to discover the meaning of that word since it seems to conjure a really positive vibe or attitude about the Filipino people. I came to know that the trait of resiliency is somewhat comparable to the pliancy of a bamboo. Resiliency is often likened to the admirable characteristic of the bamboo that bends to the strength of the wind and its ability to bounce back to its original state. Thus, when the term is used to define the Filipino people, indeed, …show more content…
It is a given fact that Philippines undergo several typhoons every year but it seems that we are not learning from it. Looking back, when you compare the casualties of catastrophic typhoons that hit the Philippines the trends seem to show that we are not really prepared to face these disasters. For instance, on 23 September 2009, Ondoy affected almost 993,227 families, making it to become one of the worst natural disasters in the Philippines in terms of number of people affected. Out of this affected people, 464 were killed and 529 were injured and a total of 15,798 families were temporarily displaced and took refuge in evacuation centers (Olan, 2014). On the same note, on the 15th day of 2011, Sendong hit the northern part of Mindanao and killed almost 1,439 people. The estimated cost of damages by Typhoon Sendong amounted to P999, 946,415 or close to 1 billion and left 65,067 families homeless (Rappler, 2011). Lastly, Typhoon Haiyan, dubbed as the strongest typhoon to land in the recorded history, affected almost 16 million people, leaving in its wake 6,300 deaths, 4.1 million displaced people and 1.1 million houses damaged (USAID, 2014). When you make sense of these numbers, one can readily grasp that we are not resilient in the face of disasters, we are ill-prepared. Knowing that Philippines is prone to typhoons and that data showed that thousands of people die, why is the government not putting …show more content…
When we have problems, we always paint our faces with smile and exude positivity in order to get over with our problems. More often, we do not dwell on problems, we move on. In times disasters and calamities, Filipinos are ingenious in finding ways to make their lives better such that we just build a raft in order to help us wade in flood waters, we wrap our shoes with plastic in order not to get wet and we even make business out of the calamities we faced (i.e. cellphone and laptop charging during typhoon Haiyan, selling ice cold water, etc.). There is nothing wrong in doing these things, however, along the process we forget to seek solutions to these bigger problems. We learned that ours is a hopeless case and just all we do is cope and wait for these problems to pass. We have not become resilient in the face of disaster but we have become apathetic. More often than not, we just accept the status quo, thinking that we cannot do anything to change it. In the context of disasters, we do not thoroughly demand state support and assistance because we were used to the fact that we solve problems on our own. We are becoming helpless when disasters come, not resilient. We just mask such concept of powerlessness under the guise of resilience. The question that still remains to be answered is: Are we really resilient people? They say we just laugh and smile our problems off. On the hindsight, perhaps we just smile because that is just