It’s hard to describe the specific kind of frustration that fills you when you’re stuck for hours on Quezon Avenue during a monsoon downpour on a Monday morning on your way to a meeting in Manila.

Last Monday, July 21, was one of those days. The rains came strong and steady — the kind that makes you wonder why you had decided to go to work. There was an option to send a link and do the meeting via zoom, but with the stop-and-go, gas-and-brake traffic, I had no hands to send one. When traffic crawls like molasses, one goes with the flow, or risk the ire of impatience driving each vehicle with taillights glowing like weary red eyes through rain.

Meanwhile, my phone buzzed orange rain warnings, and I couldn’t even stop the ear-splitting sound. Then it beeped messages, one which flashed — Turn back now! — sent by a friend concerned and anxious that I had ventured into monsoon rain. In front of me, floodwaters crept higher — a fourth of a tire, a third, half-way. Still I crawled on, confident that the Isuzu DMax 4x4 I was driving could get me out of deep flood. In one of the inner streets I ventured into, a traffic aide stood to direct traffic to a counterflow because the road ahead looked like a river. But when he saw the DMax, the traffic aide stepped aside, waved me to go on, and the DMax plowed through the water.

But I needed more than confidence in my vehicle to get to a place where I could send the zoom link. But first I had to deal with the scene — exhausting, infuriating, and sadly, all too familiar. Every rainy season, we brace ourselves for this same scene — streets turning into rivers, tempers flaring inside cars, engines threatening to stall, patience running on fumes.

You’d think that by 2025, we would have solved this. And yet here we are — still arguing with gravity and poor drainage.

In the middle of the mess, and to calm my impatience, I watched drivers more closely. The usual aggressiveness was tempered by necessity. There was no space for speed, and swerving was more about survival than entitlement. A strange kind of courtesy surfaced — drivers waving others through flooded lanes, blinking headlights not in anger but as small gestures of solidarity. We were all prisoners of monsoon rains, inching forward with caution, resignation, and anxiety.

What can a motorist do while trapped like this? There’s no shortcut. No app to redirect you. So you sit, stew, and think. You notice the absurdity of people — especially students in uniforms — wading through floodwaters as if it’s just another Monday. You wonder why their mothers allowed them to go to school in that weather.

You wonder about government officials who promise flood control every year but never seem to deliver. You think of the irony of a city that dreams of being “world-class” yet collapses under a few hours of rain.

Still — beneath the frustration — there’s hope. Hope in the quiet patience of drivers letting others merge. Hope in the resilience of people pressing on despite the water rising around them. Hope in the traffic aides clad in raincoats trying their best to keep traffic flowing. Hope in the knowledge that we deserve better, and we can demand better.

We cannot normalize this chaos. We cannot shrug and say, “This is how it is when it rains.” Why should we accept that? We have the right to expect roads that don’t flood, drainage that works, traffic plans that prioritize people’s lives over politics. The anger we feel stuck in traffic under monsoon skies isn’t pointless. It’s a reminder that Metro Manila needs fixing, and that change — real, lasting, overdue change — is not impossible.

The rains will always come. Typhoons will always test our patience. But with every flood and wasted hour on Quezon Avenue, España or Edsa, I believe more people are realizing this shouldn’t be our normal. We’re tired. We’re angry. But we’re also hopeful. And maybe — finally — that hope will move faster than the traffic.