I didn’t think about the environment until breathing started feeling heavier on the ride home.
It was one of those late afternoons in General Santos City where the heat clings to your skin long after the sun starts lowering. I was inside a tricycle, knees brushing against the metal, my bag resting on my lap like it always does during commutes. Everything about the ride felt ordinary. The same route. The same traffic. The same waiting. But the air inside felt stale, almost suffocating. Smoke from passing vehicles drifted in too easily, settling in the small space until even breathing felt exhausting.
Behind me, two women started talking.
“Grabe na gyud ang hangin diri sa syudad no? Murag lain na kaayo’g baho labi na kung rush hour.”
(The air in the city is getting really bad, isn’t it? It smells different now, especially during rush hour.)
“Bitaw. Sauna dili man ing-ani. Karon murag abog ug aso na gyud pirmi.”
(Yeah. It wasn’t like this before. Now it feels like it’s always dust and smoke.)
“Ambot oy, murag di na healthy. Bisan ga lingkod ra ta diri, murag lisod na ginhawa.”
(I don’t know, it doesn’t feel healthy anymore. Even just sitting here, it’s already hard to breathe.)
I didn’t turn around. I just listened. Not because what they were saying was new, but because of how casually they said it. There was no panic in their voices. No outrage. Just quiet observation, like they had already accepted that this is what the city has become. And somehow, that bothered me more than the heat itself. They were right. The air does feel different now, but most of us have learned to move through it without questioning what we are slowly getting used to.
I have heard conversations about climate change before. Usually online. Usually during Earth Month, when everyone suddenly remembers reusable bags and reposts infographics about saving the planet. But sitting in that tricycle felt different. The issue stopped sounding distant the moment it became physical. It was no longer just about melting ice caps or rising temperatures somewhere else. It was right there in the air we were breathing
The tricycle stopped at an intersection, and smoke from nearby vehicles drifted inside without resistance. Nobody covered their noses. Nobody complained. Not even me. We all just sat there and inhaled it like it was ordinary. That moment stayed with me because it made me realize how quickly people adapt to discomfort. We adjust before we question. We normalize before we resist. Environmental decline no longer feels like a distant issue about melting glaciers or dying forests. Sometimes it looks like commuters inhaling polluted air on the way home and pretending it is tolerable because they have no other option.
And maybe that’s the saddest part. The environment doesn’t always collapse loudly. Sometimes it changes quietly enough for people to live with it. Quietly enough for polluted air to become part of rush hour. Quietly enough for difficulty breathing to become a casual conversation inside a tricycle. There is something deeply unsettling about how human beings can normalize slow harm simply because it happens gradually.
Before that ride, environmental issues felt easy to separate from everyday life. They sounded too large, too distant, too global. But that afternoon changed something for me. I realized the environment is not just oceans, forests, or headlines about climate change. Sometimes it is simply the air inside the crowded tricycle and the quiet realization that breathing did not used to feel this difficult.
I got off the tricycle the same way I always do, fixing my bag on my shoulder and stepping back into the noise of the city like nothing happened. The traffic continued. The smoke stayed in the air. People kept moving. So did I.
But their conversation followed me home.
Not because it was dramatic, but because it wasn’t. Because it sounded so ordinary. Two people talking about struggling to breathe as casually as talking about the weather. And maybe that is the scariest part of all. Not that the environment is changing, but how easily we are learning to live with the change. How easily polluted air turns into something people simply learn to endure.
We keep waiting for environmental damage to look catastrophic before taking it seriously, not realizing that sometimes it arrives quietly. Through smoke that settles in your lungs. Through heat that lingers too long. Through ordinary rides home that suddenly feel harder to breathe through.
And maybe Earth Month is not just about saving the planet in grand, impossible ways. Maybe it begins with refusing to treat these small moments as normal. Refusing to romanticize resilience when what we really are doing is enduring.
Because the environment is no longer distant enough to ignore.
We are already breathing it.
