Bless the People Keeping it Fair
(To live is to suffer. To suffer is to love. To love is to live.)
I won’t deny how much I love the city.
The walkable streets. The cafés glowing past midnight. The convenience of having everything within reach—as if life itself could be neatly arranged into short commutes, walks, and coffee cups. There is a version of me that thrives there. A version that moves quickly, thinks quickly, and slowly forgets that most people do not get to live with the same ease.
That’s why I keep returning home. Of course, part of it is the comfort of being with my mom, my dog, and my brothers—the familiar kind of love that softens even the hardest weeks. But beyond that, home reminds me of truths the city can make so easy to overlook. It brings me back to the kind of reality that keeps a person grounded, human, and aware of lives lived far differently from their own.
The people waiting patiently in long lines, choosing not to pay the extra twenty pesos because every coin already belongs somewhere else. The lolas and lolos carrying baskets heavier than their aging bodies should bear, still working because rest has always been a privilege reserved for other people. The passengers asleep on jeepneys—not lazy, not careless, just exhausted in a way only survival can explain.
And I always find myself thinking about the lolas and lolos with the heavy baskets. I think about what it truly costs to still be out there—not in pesos, but in aching knees, bent backs, and years quietly surrendered to hardship. I think about how easily many of us scroll past realities like theirs without ever allowing ourselves to feel the full weight of them. These are not people who need our pity; they need our witness.
Our acknowledgment that their lives are as real and as worthy as any life that gets to move more slowly. They deserve to be seen, not as background characters in somebody else’s success story, but as human beings carrying entire worlds on tired shoulders. Social media often replaces reality with something softer, prettier, and easier to digest. But going home reminds me that the real world still exists beyond filtered screens and carefully crafted narratives.
And I hope I never become too comfortable to notice. I hope no amount of ambition, success, or distance ever smooths these truths out of me. I want them carved into my heart permanently—not out of guilt, not out of pity, but as remembrance and as proof that I was present enough to witness something real. I want these moments etched into me like scars that never fully fade, so that wherever life takes me, I will always know how to speak the language of the weary, the struggling, and the overlooked. I hope I continue remembering the faces of the people this world often forgets, even long after they have passed me by.
So dear God,
Bless the people keeping it fair.
Bless the ones who continue showing up despite how heavy life has become. Give them rest they never had the luxury to ask for. Give softness back to the people this world has only hardened. Give them extra. Give them at least as much grace as they have quietly given everyone else.
And please—let me never live so comfortably that I forget how to recognize their humanity in my own.