MERRIAM-WEBSTER defines resilience as “an ability to recover from or adjust to misfortune or change.” Offhand, therefore, it is a virtue, a positive quality that one needs to be able to move on from misfortune. It is a quality that we Filipinos have and have it to the extreme.
Maybe it’s our religion or our bahala na culture that makes us resilient to the extreme. Whatever it is, because we have it to the extreme, our resilience has ceased to be a virtue and has become a liability. (Something like our greatest strength is also and at the same time our greatest weakness). It keeps us from seeing the systemic roots of our misfortune or, if we see them, from raging against things, systems and persons that cause us so much suffering.
Because of this resilience we are known to smile, on nationwide or worldwide television, in the midst of a catastrophic event like a devastating flood that takes the life of loved ones and destroys the meager but hard-earned properties we have. And somehow, because of that resilience we always manage to move on.
We don’t go around shooting people at random just to vent our frustration over some misfortune. We don’t lose hope so easily either and take our own lives to make some tragedy of our life go away.
We do not rage against people that clog our drainage system with their garbage. Nor do we rage against public officials who not only allow garbage to be thrown anywhere but also refuse to collect them. When the floods come, we complain but then we immediately adjust to the reality and move on without doing anything about our trash disposal and management practices.
We do not rage against stupid, ill-disciplined and ill-mannered drivers. Instead we adopt their style of driving to make it through the chaos in our streets. Nor do we rage against incompetent authorities who do next to nothing to tame the traffic beast.
We not only do not rage against corrupt political leaders but we re-elect them or elect even worse others, having adjusted to their traditional short-sighted governance style.
We do not rage against hypocritical religious leaders who insist on taking care only of our souls and after issuing oratio imperatas for problems of the body are back to business as usual in Church with list-priced canned prayers and religious rituals for the welfare of our souls.
Sooner or later, and better sooner than later, we have to jettison that part of resilience that has made us behave like dumb cattle being led to slaughter by uncaring leaders. Otherwise, our virtue of resilience becomes a liability which will prevent us from extricating our benighted country from the intellectual, moral, or social sinkhole our extreme resilience has dug for her.