Breaking our ‘resilience’
Filipino businesspeople have been resilient through natural disasters, both bad and lazy governments, and now a pandemic. And while we will see a great change in the business landscape, that is part of being resilient and, yes, should be glorified.
it is obviously a “generational” thing. the famous 2017 study in the united Kingdom found that most people under the age of 35 were helpless in performing simple tasks to take care of themselves. the younger, the more incompetent: 84 percent of 18 to 24-year-olds admitted they do not know how to change a light bulb. Seventy-four percent of them admit they would rather pay someone else to do it.
Didn’t St. Paul write in the Bible, “If a man will not change a light blub, he shall sit in the dark?”
The English word “resilient,” from 1640, meant “returning to the original position” from the Latin resilientem, “inclined to leap or spring back.” Resilience is the ability to withstand adversity and bounce back from difficult life events. Trigger warning!
It is part of the Survival of The Fittest, a term made famous in the fifth edition (1869) of On the Origin of
Species by British naturalist Charles Darwin, suggesting that organisms best able to adjust and adapt to their environment are the most successful in surviving. Bible time again, this time from Matthew: “A wise man built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew but it did not fall. A foolish man built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the f loods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
The point is that being resilient—adapt as the environment changes and adjust to external factors both expected and unexpected—was a necessary and inherent human characteristic.
Currently, though, the famous Filipino ‘Netizen’ as quoted by their favorite online news source says, “‘Don’t ever talk about Filipinos being resilient in these times of calamities. We became resilient because the society told us to do so, we are forced, and we have no choice.”
“Netizens emphasized that Filipino resilience should not be glorified.” While some are waiting for the government’s “Department of Light Bulb Changing,” Filipino businesses have shown remarkable resilience in the past almost 18 months, adjusting and adapting. But things changed as of August 1st.
To quote the April 1799 copy the oldest existing magazine, The Scots Magazine, “As the Oriental proverb says, the last straw that overloads the camel, a small addition if illtimed, may overturn the whole.”
The Metro Manila general community quarantine “with heightened restrictions” on August 1st went to enhanced community quarantine from August 6, and that was the last straw for many.
Through the initial lockdowns last year, the financially weakest businesses fell by the road. Others used capital reserves through the quarantines of 2020, including the Modified ECQ of August 2020. Since the ECQ returned in April 2021, many businesses are drained of reserves. Many others are realizing that it will take literally years to work back up in terms of profits and cash reserves to where they were pre-covid despite adapting to other models like delivery. It is not worth the effort. Better to close, rethink, and start over.
There is no light in the tunnel to full reopening for the chain stores and barbershops in the malls to the restaurants in places like Molito in the South, Greenbelt and BGC and on to Trinoma and Eastwood City.
The thing that the ‘Netizen’ does not understand is that being resilient is a personal quality. Either you have it or you don’t. And it is not a “national characteristic.”
Filipino businesspeople have been resilient through natural disasters, both bad and lazy governments, and now a pandemic. And while we will see a great change in the business landscape, that is part of being resilient and, yes, should be glorified.