Dear Mr. President,
Are we really looking at the same sky? When you look up, you probably see stars that shine bright in the depths of the night. But our realities are different. When we look up, we see roofs overlapping each other, with electrical wires tangled beyond reason. So few stars appear from our view that we have to try our very best to get a peek at a beautiful sight that others take for granted.
And when this sky we so admire weeps and roars, its thunder being its bullets, we are submerged. The frequency with which the sky weeps is, you said in an interview, why "we should shift our mindset as this becomes the inevitable." It is admirable, indeed, that we Filipinos have the ability to always adjust, to swallow the words that are about to question such statements and just be proud of the fact that we are viewed as strong and resilient while we suffer. Even if we know better, we don't do better. I hope we don't have to wait until we are fully submerged in the water, dead because the only thing we were holding on to were promises that we deemed were strong enough to keep us afloat.
I live in a place where the city is almost 30 minutes away. People have to wake up much earlier than usual as the traffic can feel like it takes forever to reach their destination. On a bad day, the journey can easily stretch to an hour or more. Yet, this experience isn't unique to my place, this happens every day all around the country, forcing the people to wake up early and come home late, only to earn minimum wages that barely make a living. Our only question is: Why has the government never resolved these problems despite having billions of pesos in the budget allotted each year?
Watching your SONA last July, your promises, plans, and actions were, honestly speaking, not enough. Is the government really there? We need to put an end to the romanticization of Filipino resilience and start holding the government responsible for its failure to provide long-term solutions to issues and problems that our counry faces. We are similar to the tangled, twisted electrical cables that dangle over our streets. We are unable to claim that our stories are uncommon. We are identical, and the same adversities have bent, knotted, and torn us apart. Our lives are a chorus of common hardships and resiliency, a loud, chaotic, and neglected choir. I hope that your plans will one day truly change our sky and help us rise above the water.
Ultimately, the true measure of your plans won't be in the promises you make, but in whether the stars we see from our streets are finally the same ones you see from yours.
.
Threads. (n.d.). https://www.threads.com/@aencille/post/DMfOPpEz7jI?xmt=AQF0ABh2wWK3muWObPmnXgVbQQonC0jjE9tsiF7Rw0h6IQ
Dava, B. (2025, July 24). Marcos says Filipinos need mindset shift as typhoons become inevitable | ABS-CBN News. ABS-CBN. https://www.abs-cbn.com/news/nation/2025/7/24/marcos-says-filipinos-need-mindset-shift-as-typhoons-become-inevitable-1505
Tangled electrical wires are seen along Kapalaran Street in . . . (n.d.). www.google.com. https://share.google/images/fAqF8ODdPQuAqiBhc
HIGHLIGHTS: President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s SONA 2025. (n.d.). www.google.com. https://share.google/images/XHQdYNSKUFGkPvL0I
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