We endure — but we must not normalize

August 30 — flash floods! Quezon City was the hardest hit. PAGASA attributed it to severe thunderstorms that brought abnormally high rainfall across parts of the city. The deluge overwhelmed our already overburdened drainage systems.

The result? Metro’s streets turned into instant rivers. Consequences? Commuters were stranded, classes dismissed, and businesses forced to close early. Implications? For many, hours of productivity and earnings simply disappeared into the flood.

These frequent floods have become as regular as the weekly fuel price hike — arriving on the dot, draining our resources, and leaving us with little choice but to endure.

And, endure we do. Filipinos are known for it. We endure traffic, brownouts, rising costs, delayed projects, and unmet promises. We endure long queues in government offices, sudden water interruptions, and the constant delays that have become normal metropolitan living. That August day, stuck in traffic and watching the hours slip away, I almost accepted it: maybe floods are just another thing we are meant to endure.

But this should not be the case. Endurance, when unchecked, can slip into something dangerous: normalization. Something done continuously becomes normal. What we endure regularly and for too long will be accepted as ordinary. When we accept these as ordinary, we stop demanding change.

This truth isn’t new because we have known it for decades. Flashback to the 1980s: a public service announcement showed a housewife tossing her garbage into a creek. The rains came, the same trash returned, floating in her sala.

Simple message — what you throw away will come back to you. Four decades later, the lesson remains the same — but urgent. Having been often dismissed, therefore, we still have the same scenario: waste still clogs our drains, and with it the lives of millions.

Of course, the floods are not solely about garbage. Climate change brings heavier rains. Overdevelopment has paved over natural drainage. Informal settlements crowd waterways. Government inefficiency, compounded by investigations into flood control projects plagued by ghost contracts and misallocation has left many critical initiatives delayed or undone. One audit showed that only a fraction of allocated funds had translated into actual flood-control infrastructure.

Every peso misused does not simply vanish. It returns to us with a vengeance in the form of flooded streets, ruined appliances, lost wages, and children wading to school.

Definitely, we must and should demand accountability. Leaders must face this reality with transparency and urgency. But accountability does not stop at the government’s door. Citizens, too, are bound by the social contract. The floods revert to us not only what the government neglects, but also what we ourselves dump. Correct waste management is something simple and ordinary and remains one of our strongest defenses even today.

This is where endurance must evolve into something more as there are burdens a society cannot simply endure. When floods come, they reveal not just poor drainage, but our discipline, our systems, and our sense of community.

We cannot just endure these floods.

We cannot just endure wasted billions.

We cannot just endure indifference.

To endure is human. To normalize is surrender.

And, surrender is something this country cannot afford.

So let this be our rallying cry: we endure, yes, but we should not normalize this.