The 7:37 a.m. interruption

The 7:37 a.m. interruption | Daily Tribune

Then came 7:37 a.m.

When the magnitude 7.8 earthquake ripped through the Cotabato Trench off Sarangani, the violent shuddering did not just crack concrete across Mindanao. It instantly shattered the grand, fragile architecture of our schedules. In 70 breathless seconds, the complex future we had so carefully planned became utterly irrelevant.

The unread email that felt like a matter of professional survival a minute earlier suddenly meant absolutely nothing. The petty corporate grievance dissolved. As a father, your entire universe narrows in a single heartbeat to the absolute essential: You do not think about your career or your bank account; you simply grab your child, shield them with your own body and pray that the ceiling holds.

Since it’s Father’s Day today, this sudden clarity feels especially heavy. As fathers, we are conditioned to be the ultimate architects of tomorrow. We wear our exhaustion like a badge of honor, convinced that sacrificing our present presence is the only way to secure our family’s future. We convince ourselves that we will play that game, have that deep conversation and finally rest after the next promotion, after the next financial milestone, after the kids have grown.

But a minute like 7:37 a.m. is a brutal, indiscriminate equalizer. It strips away the illusion of our autonomy and presents the teenager, the corporate executive and the parent with the exact same terrifying truth: Tomorrow is not a guarantee. It is an unearned luxury. The futures we are killing ourselves to build can be rendered meaningless in a matter of seconds.

We praise the Filipino spirit for its resilience, pointing to our ability to smile and rebuild after the ground stops shaking. But perhaps the truer, more urgent lesson of this disaster is found in how we inhabit the minutes before the ground moves.

This is a quiet plea to stop ghosting our own lives. For fathers, it is a reminder that the greatest provision we can give our families isn’t just a stable tomorrow, but an anchored today. Say the words that need saying now. Extend the forgiveness you have been keeping on a long timeline.

Put down the screen, hold the hands of the people beside you, and breathe. The ordinary, frantic, beautiful mess of a Monday morning isn’t the prelude to life. It is life. We must live it at the exact moment it happens, before the clock strikes 7:37.