Fragments of the Quiet Mind

I remember the news trickling in, the way the earth gave way in Benguet and Cebu — houses swallowed, lives buried beneath rubble that was once the land we called home. It’s easy to point fingers at mining companies, at open-pit scars carved like wounds across the mountainside. But what about us? What part do we play in this quiet violence? Mining is a cruel pact. We dig not just for gold or minerals, but for the promise of progress. We tell ourselves the earth will forgive us, that the price we pay is worth the convenience and wealth it offers. But the land does not forgive — it remembers. The landslide is not just soil collapsing; it’s the earth’s way of whispering a bitter truth: we are strangers here, not masters. The calls to ban mining are calls to respect a fragile balance we have long ignored. Yet, the complexity of survival in a place like the Philippines makes this no simple moral judgment. The people who rely on mining for livelihood are caught in the same web of contradict...

It started with a simple question from a cousin at dinner: "Would you still vaccinate your future kids after all that Dengvaxia stuff?" I had just taken a bite of kare-kare. I chewed for a bit longer than necessary. Not because I didn’t have an answer, but because I knew the moment I opened my mouth, I’d become the uninvited spokesperson for science, ethics, and a country’s fractured trust. There’s something absurd about the way we treat public health here. We throw away decades of medical progress faster than we throw rice at a wedding, then panic when outbreaks arrive like uninvited relatives during fiesta. We trusted science — until it made a mistake. And like every Filipino family feud, we never truly recover. We just stop speaking to each other and pretend everything’s fine. For the past Months, the name "Dengvaxia" spread faster than the disease it was meant to prevent. A vaccine meant to protect became a symbol of betrayal. And suddenly, everyone was a...