The little things in life can be the most constant, aren’t they? The morning heat we experience is just another typical day for a once-abundant tropical country. There goes “Manong Mantataho” who gets us sprinting down the stairs just so we can order a cup of the soy milk we love. It’s fun to see the cats yawning and trying to get the morning rays of the sun into their hiding skin.

Again, just another morning.

But from a bigger perspective, scratch the constants! We face much more than the scorching heat, although yes, it is alarming. Way down Luzon, in the far west where our waters are located—something lies. They say the sleeping dragon should not be bothered, but how could we if it woke up and caused havoc? It is ours! Not just the fish in the ocean, not just the tides, not just its waves, not just the strong fishy scent of the sea, not just its proximity from our land—it is all ours. The waters of the west where our fishermen do their living, where warships invaded, where violence happened, we owned it all.

So now, it is not just another morning.

Just as it is much more calming to love the constants, it is also better to be bothered. We have seen enough, we have endured enough. Pearl of the Orient Seas, isn’t our romantic name befitting to inherit the sea of the West? On a serious note, it is ours from the beginning after all. So, children of this land, we don’t seek wars, we want no children of the Land of the Sleeping Dragon in our waters!

This is no longer about the unchanging days and nights, it is our present… this is our future.

It is already heart-wrenching to see the system fucked up, the greed of those who are seated reeking, and politics as messy as ever, we should not become a spawn of the Land of the Free! The silent enemy since the wars that had happened in the distant past—they will never care.

May it be the Sleeping Dragon or the Land of the Free, both have no right to hold any part of the Pearl of the Orient Seas.