We have become too good at surviving

By Lcid Crescent D. Fernandez

We’ve had an interesting occurrence lately at FMC Law: we’ve had an influx of foreign clients. Among the many other legal needs that they have, however, the consultation usually devolves into a topic that Filipinos have been forced to learn to live with: brownouts.

The setting is familiar. Electricity is interrupted. Work stops. Businesses scramble. Families adjust their entire lives around something that we appear to have no power over.

Our foreign clients often react differently.

Their instinct is to ask: “Who is responsible? What’s being done about this? How can we make them accountable? What cases can we file to ensure this never happens again?”

For us Filipinos, a brownout is a familiar inconvenience – perhaps even an expected one. We’ve become so well-trained at handling them. We reach for the flashlight. We charge the power banks. We save our work. We turn on mobile data. We check the schedule. We tell the children to open the windows.

If it lasts long enough, we start thinking about buying a generator. If it happens often enough, perhaps solar panels. We have gotten so good at adapting to situations that are viewed by foreigners as an affront to their basic rights.

We have become extraordinarily good at surviving things we should never have to endure in the first place.

We call it resilience.

And resilience is a beautiful Filipino trait. We endure typhoons, economic crises, political uncertainty, traffic, bureaucracy, poor infrastructure and power interruptions. We find a way.

Frankly, this is because we’ve been taught that there is no other choice. We have to look out for our own households. We have to take care of our own families. We have to look after ourselves. And we cannot spare any more of our attention for the community.

The romanticization of resilience has become learned helplessness. We’re too focused on trying to deal with the circumstances we’ve been given. We’ve had our heads down trying to make it through the day that we forget that this is not and should not be the normal.

And the impact is exponential.

Consider the small business owner.

A brownout does not simply mean that the lights are off.

For a small restaurant, it can mean food spoiling in the refrigerator.

For a bakery, production stops.

For a printing shop, work cannot be completed.

For a small manufacturing operation, machines sit idle.

For a professional working remotely, a client meeting is interrupted and a deadline is missed.

And for the small business owner? There goes their income for the day.

However, the cost doesn’t end there, does it?.

Someone has to buy diesel.

Someone has to maintain the generator.

Someone has to replace equipment damaged by unstable electricity.

Someone has to pay employees who cannot work.

The point is: someone has to pay for all of it.

That someone is usually us.

We bear the cost of a society that cannot hold itself up to a standard that is normal for most modern civilizations.

And then we congratulate ourselves for being resilient – for surviving. And we should applaud ourselves for our proficiency, perhaps almost as much as we should condemn the powers that be for forcing us to be so.

Resilience should be our ability to recover from extraordinary circumstances—not our permanent strategy for dealing with ordinary life. There should be no glorifying the heroism of just living normally.

There is nothing wrong with preparing for failure. But there is something profoundly wrong when failure becomes the baseline expectation. We should absolutely invest in solar power when it makes economic sense. We should buy generators when our businesses need them. We should build redundancy into our operations.

These should, however, simply be strategic decisions—not the ransom we pay for the privilege of having a functioning economy. These should be options that we have. These should be choices that we make borne out of a surplus of our income.

Instead, they are the price we pay to survive.

And we have become so good at paying it.