A hypersonic missile is reported to travel at nine times the velocity of sound, cutting through air defenses with the ease a knife cuts through wet paper. That is not a tool intended to subdue. That is intended to annihilate. Man has crossed the line, from building tools of victory to crafting instruments of extinction.

Guns used to be crude but controllable. A sword, spear, or musket took guts and close-up work. Even the early tanks and planes, as deadly as they were, still demanded strategy and boots on the ground. Things are not the same anymore. A missile fired from mid-continent can burn cities to the ground before the enemy even hears the sirens wailing. Drones can kill with clinical detachment from the comfort of an air-conditioned office. Nuclear submarines can lie under the water for months with sufficient firepower to annihilate the human species. The very reality of war has been stripped of its face—it has been rendered too easy, too distant, and too final.

These doomsday weapons are not even aimed at capturing territories anymore. They are designed to flatten, burn, or level everything to the ground. It’s no longer about taking over ground or claiming power. It’s about claiming the authority to destroy all forms of life in a matter of seconds. The world’s most powerful states allocate billions of dollars annually on arms nobody ever wishes to employ but everybody still yearns for. It’s a global addiction to worldwide destruction in the name of national security.

Strangely, we human beings have become tech-savvy, but are moving in reverse morally. We’ve decoded the human genome, landed rovers on Mars, constructed machines that can comprehend language—but we still have the medieval ambition to conquer. But now we’ve traded horses for hydrogen bombs. That is not forward. That is madness in high definition. We’re at the edge of a cliff, looking to see who has the devastating explosives.

Worst of all is that war isn’t even between countries anymore. Terrorists, rogue nations, and even AI platforms now play with military technology. When those weapons fall into the hands of the wrong people—and they will—it won’t be geopolitics; it’ll be existentially catastrophic. We’re one loose missile from mass graves being the standard, and the Earth a barren rock floating peacefully in space.

And as we come up with methods of vaporizing one another, the actual enemies—poverty, disease, hunger, ignorance—keep on thriving. Bombs won’t feed the hungry. Missiles won’t teach children. A bulletproof vest won’t keep an afflicted child from leukemia. And yet here we are, laying out more funds for death machines than for life-sustaining solutions. We’ve put preservation in second place to annihilation. That’s the peak of human foolishness.

Surely, we would shake our heads over a child playing with fire in a grass field that had not seen rain in months. We can’t help but be amazed at our intellect and appalled by our stupidity. We are so smart, creating the technologies that will destroy us and rationalizing them in the name of peace. It is the ultimate irony of our epoch: peace by threat, security by intimidation, survival by fear.

We are not yet damned—but we are most surely dancing with damnation. It’s time leaders sit not in war rooms but classrooms, hospitals, forests, and slums—to look at the true war zones that count. Because the bottom line is, the only war worth winning is the one against our suicidal tendencies. Everything else is suicide in slow motion.

To the thousands of young men and women donning caps and gowns, graduation feels like the end of a long, arduous trek. And rightly so—it is an ending. An end to sleepless nights wrestling with modules, an end to surviving on instant noodles and pure willpower, and an end to the academic rituals that have defined much of their youth.

But let me be clear: this is not the finish line. It is only a bend in the road.

Graduation is not the culmination of struggle. In many ways, it is only the gateway to a new kind of hardship—one that doesn’t come with syllabi, deadlines, or teacher’s guidance. It comes wrapped in the uncertainties of job hunting, the pressure of becoming financially independent, and the quiet doubt of whether you’re truly ready for life’s next chapter.

Yet, this next chapter is the most exhilarating one. It is here where the strength forged in college—your resilience, your values, your passions—are tested not in theory but in the furnace of reality.

The diploma does not guarantee ease. It guarantees readiness. Readiness to face a world where your character matters more than your grades. Where persistence trumps prestige. Where who you are means more than what title follows your name.

Let’s not reduce graduation to a ceremonial march across a stage. Let’s see it as a launch. Because the real measure of your education is not how high your grades climbed, but how far your compassion reaches, how deeply your integrity stands, and how bravely you respond to the world’s problems.

Because in truth, a student never truly stops struggling. And that’s a beautiful thing—because growth never stops either.

THAT gospel episode about Christ’s disciples experiencing a terrible tempest at sea while Christ was simply sleeping in one corner of the boat (cfr. Mt 8,23-27) should remind us that while we cannot help but be filled with fear and worries when all kinds of life’s troubles would assail us, we should never lose the hope that Christ will always come to our aid one way or another.

We should try to recover our hope and serenity so that we can be in a better condition to tackle the many challenges of our life. We have to train ourselves to have this kind of reaction, knowing that trials and all kinds of difficulties are unavoidable in our life. Let’s never forget what Christ once said: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (Jn 16,33)

In all our affairs and situations in life, we should always go to God to ask for his help and guidance, and to trust his ways and his providence, even if the outcome of our prayers and petitions appears unanswered, if not, contradicted.

This should be the attitude to have. It’s an attitude that can only indicate our unconditional faith and love for God who is always in control of things, and at the same time can also leave us in peace and joy even at the worst of the possibilities.

Remember the Book of Ecclesiastes where it says that for everything there is a season, “a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal…” But everything is under God’s control, and even if we are capable of eternity, we just the same “cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” (3,1ff) We just have to trust him.

We have to follow the example of the many characters in the gospel who, feeling helpless in the many predicaments they were in, earnestly rushed to Christ for some succor. They went to him unafraid and unashamed and they got what they wanted.

It may happen that we may not get what we want. And in this, we should not be too surprised or too worried. What is sure is that God always listens and gives us what is best for us.

If our request is granted, it’s because it is good for us. We should however be careful that the favor should not spoil us but should rather make us more thankful and faithful to him.
If our request is not granted, it could be because what we asked is actually not good for us. Examples of this kind of cases are aplenty, and many would later on realize how lucky they were that what they asked for was not granted.

In this life, we should just have to develop a sportsman’s attitude, since life is like a game. Yes, life is like a game, because we set out to pursue a goal, we have to follow certain rules, we are given some means, tools and instruments, we train and are primed to win and do our best, but defeats can always come, and yet, we just have to move on.

We need a sporting spirit because life’s true failure can come only when we choose not to have hope.

Impeached Vice President Sara Z. Duterte expressed her irritation on an advertisement on a television reportedly at the airport as she was on her way to visit Melbourne, Australia on June 22, 2025, said the San Juanico bridge was not a tourist spot. She asked the crowd, “Do you even know how long the San Juanico Bridge is? 2.6 kilometers. I was so irritated. How can a 2.6-kilometer bridge be considered a tourist “I was extremely irritated with one part of the ad. It said the San Juanico Bridge in Tacloban is a tourist spot,” she noted. The first statement regarding the length of the San Juanico Bridge as 2.6 kilometers is clearly a too long guess as it is more than the recorded length of 2.16 kilometers.

She then compared San Juanico Bridge to a bridge in China, which she claimed connects China to Zengcheng to Macau to Hongkong which she claimed to be 264 kilometers long, suggesting that such infrastructure deserves to be called a “modern tourist attraction. A verification on the map of bare that the said route does not show any bridge connecting the places she mentioned. One may travel to the said places first travel from mainland China to Zengcheng, likely by land, then take another transportation from Zengcheng to Macau, and finally travel from Macau to Hong Kong through the most common route between Macau and Hong Kong is by ferry. There is no such bridge along the route she mentioned, this is her second too long guess.

While there is no 264-kilometer bridge in China, she was likely referring to the Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge, which is a 164.8 kilometers long viaduct on the Beijing–Shanghai High-Speed Railway. It is the longest bridge in the world since its designation by Guinness World Record in 2011. For her to claim that that the bridge is 264 kilometers long appears as her third too long guess at 264 kilometers as it is when in reality it is only 164.8 kilometers.

The statements of the impeached vice president drew a strong from Tingog Partylist Representative Jude Acidre who pointed out that the bridge is “more than just a tourist attraction,” but also a vital part of the Eastern Visayas’ identity. “It’s more than just an iconic photo spot. It’s more than a ribbon of steel and concrete stretching across the San Juanico Strait,” the lawmaker said through his social media account on June 23 in retort to the impeached vice president’s statement questioning the bridge’s promotion as a tourist site. Other citizens also reacted to the impeached vice president who statements appear as mere too long guess.
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