*Dr. Rodolfo John Ortiz Teope, PhD, EdD,
There comes a point in every nation’s life when waiting feels like the slowest form of dying. For as long as many of us can remember, we have been told to wait—wait for reforms, wait for progress, wait for leaders to finally decide what is best for us. We were made to believe that development will descend from above, like a blessing granted by the powerful. Yet here we are, still waiting, still hoping, and still asking ourselves if that hope is real or if it has always been a hopeless one.
I have wrestled with this idea for years: can a nation truly change if its people remain passive? When we continue to wait for our leaders to act, are we not prolonging our own suffering, entrusting our future to the very hands that allowed our present to decay? This is not just theory to me—it is a lived reality. I have seen it in the eyes of flood victims clutching what remains of their homes, in the children who go to school hungry, in the young Filipinos who wonder why their dreams weigh too heavy for this country to carry.
There is a certain comfort in waiting, a false peace that makes us think someone else is carrying the burden. But comfort is not always truth. Waiting has left us powerless, clapping for every new promise and then cursing in silence when those promises are broken. When our hope is placed in leaders who are indifferent, corrupt, or reluctant, we end up disappointed again and again. Hope itself is not weak, but hope that rests on empty leadership is like planting seeds in barren soil. No matter how much we water it, nothing grows.
Real change has never sprung from the palaces of the powerful. It is born in the streets, the fields, the classrooms, the plazas. It comes from people who decide they will wait no longer. Our neighbors in Southeast Asia remind us of this truth. In Nepal and Indonesia, when corruption and arrogance became unbearable, people marched in fury and even stormed the homes of the mighty. They understood that silence is not neutrality—it is surrender.
We too have seen it in our own history. The world knows the power of Filipinos when they come together, when they refuse to be paralyzed by leadership that has forgotten its duty. Those moments remind us that leaders do not always lead. More often than not, they are forced to move because the people demand it. We have done it before, and we can do it again.
But the struggle we face today is not just about personalities. It is about a system that has grown resistant to change. A system that feeds on corruption the way a body feeds on blood. A system that rewards loyalty to people instead of loyalty to principles. A system that celebrates showmanship instead of service. To expect this system to reform itself out of goodwill is to expect the impossible.
This is why hopeless hope must be transformed. It cannot be left to rot into despair. It must become the fuel for action. Hope must learn to walk, to march, to demand. Hope must live not in the speeches of politicians but in the determination of communities that refuse to be silenced or bribed.
I think of the teacher who insists on telling her students the truth, the farmer who refuses to surrender his land to exploitation, the young Filipino who dares to question the narratives of the powerful, the parents who remind their children that dignity is worth more than convenience. Each act may seem small, but when multiplied across a nation, they become a wave no government can resist.
If we keep waiting, then truly, we are waiting for nothing. Progress will not fall from the heavens of Malacañang, nor will it sprout from a bureaucracy addicted to mediocrity. Progress will only come when the people decide that enough is enough, when they wrestle it from a corrupt system with their own hands and voices.
We must stop hoping for hopeless hope. We must build living hope—a hope that moves and acts, a hope that forces leaders to follow rather than begs them to lead. A hope that refuses to die quietly in the silence of waiting.
The time is now. Not tomorrow, not when it becomes convenient, not when leaders finally notice us. A hungry stomach knows no law, a victim of injustice has no patience, and a people ignored for too long will not wait forever.
Change is not coming. Change is already here. It is in our hands, waiting for us to claim it.
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