Every year, as Filipinos tighten their belts and brace for rising prices, government officials dust off their favorite line, "the Filipinos are resilient".
It’s delivered with patriotic flourish, as if hardship were a badge of honor and not a glaring indictment of leadership.
But it's time to stop pretending, this romanticized resilience narrative has become the government’s most overused escape hatch.
Resilience is uplifting when it’s a story people tell about themselves.
It turns insulting when it becomes a story the government tells to avoid doing its job.
Officials love to praise families who “manage” with shrinking budgets, as if stretching pesos were a festive skill and not a survival tactic.
They applaud communities celebrating despite loss, as if joy amid difficulty is proof that services don’t need fixing.
The message is consistent and condescending, "Filipinos cope, therefore leaders need not change."
This glorification of endurance lowers the standard of what Filipinos should expect.
It makes scarcity seem normal, even admirable.
It quietly suggests that wages don’t need to rise, that social support can remain thin, that living with less is simply part of our national identity.
When you frame suffering as strength, you erase the need to address why people are suffering at all.
And so we get absurd pronouncements like insisting a few hundred pesos is enough for a holiday meal, statements that only make sense from those comfortably distant from the realities they claim to understand.
These pronouncements are not thrift, they are a symptom of leaders who have mistaken survival for satisfaction.
Yes, Filipinos are resilient.
But resilience is what people draw on when systems fail them, not a substitute for functioning systems.
If the government truly wants something to celebrate, let it celebrate progress.
Let it celebrate living wages, fair prices, and families who thrive.
Not families praised for enduring what they should never have been forced to endure.
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