We are not ready for what’s coming, and we still think we’re fine…

… and yet we do not realize how much we are f*cked.

Not mildly inconvenienced.

Not challenged.

Effed in the quiet, structural way that only becomes obvious when it is already irreversible.

In the Philippines, flooding has been downgraded from crisis to background noise. It is something you expect, complain about, work around, and forget. The water rises, the photos circulate, the sympathy pours in, and then the sun comes out. Shoes dry. Streets reopen. Memory resets.

Maybe we have the memory of an effing goldfish.

We forget not because we are busy, but because forgetting is easier than remembering what would force us to change. Remembering would mean admitting that this is not bad luck. Remembering would mean accepting that this is the result of choices made over decades and repeated with enthusiasm. Forgetting lets us move on without accountability.

We treat floods like weather.

Inevitable.

Temporary.

Nobody’s fault.

Rain happened.

What can you do?

That is how a society signals that it has already accepted decline.

We still talk about resilience like it is a virtue rather than a warning. We praise survival as if it were success. We celebrate how fast we recover without asking why recovery is required so often. We confuse endurance with intelligence and adaptation with progress.

Every year, the rain gets heavier. Every year, the cities get denser. Every year, drainage clogs, rivers shrink, and flood plains are paved over and sold as opportunity. None of this is shocking. None of this is mysterious. It is arithmetic. But arithmetic is boring, and boring things do not trend.

So we move on. We chase scandals because they are easier. They have faces. They have villains. They resolve neatly in press conferences and outrage cycles. Floods do not. Floods demand memory. Floods demand maintenance. Floods demand decisions that are unpopular, expensive, and invisible.

We do not like invisible work.

We like spectacle.

So we perform. Officials wear boots. Cameras roll. Speeches are made. Promises are issued. Then the water recedes and the silence returns. And in that silence, nothing is fixed.

The most dangerous part is not the flooding itself. It is how normal it has become. When people plan their lives around disaster instead of demanding its prevention, the system has already failed. When survival becomes the achievement, competence has been abandoned.

The rain remembers. Rivers remember. Water always finds the paths we blocked. Only we insist on forgetting, year after year, with confidence that borders on arrogance.

We act surprised when streets flood as if soil was never replaced with concrete. We act betrayed when water returns to flood plains we pretended were safe. We act helpless while repeating the same choices that led us here.

And when someone points this out, we recoil. We call it negativity. We say we need hope, not criticism. But hope without memory is just denial with better branding.

The truth is simple and uncomfortable. We are not preparing for the future. We are rehearsing for collapse and calling it resilience.

The worst floods we remember are not the worst ones coming. They are the warm up. And the reason we do not see how effed we are is because, like goldfish circling the same glass bowl, we keep mistaking survival for progress and forgetting why the water keeps rising in the first place.

Oh well.

We dry off.

We scroll on.

We convince ourselves this was just another bad week instead of a warning we ignored on schedule.

Until the next news cycle.