life – Page 3 – Darem Placer

Money looks powerful until the day you break the piggy bank and realize the problem is still bigger than what’s inside.

You count the coins slowly while ceramic pieces sit on the table beside them. Months or years of saving suddenly feel small.

Then comes the strange regret.

“I shouldn’t have broken it.”

Not because the piggy bank was expensive. Because before it broke, it still felt like security.

Maybe that’s why there’s something sad about piggy banks when you really think about them.

You spend so much time protecting something fragile because it helps you feel safe. Then one difficult season arrives and suddenly survival asks you to destroy the very thing you protected.

Relationships can feel like that too.

Some people spend years building trust, memories, and routines together, only for one painful chapter to crack everything open.

And maybe money belongs in the same fragile category as everything else we try to protect.

We treat it like absolute security. But there are moments in life where even all your savings together cannot fully protect you from loss, sickness, fear, or loneliness.

That’s probably why some people with little money still survive difficult seasons better than others with full bank accounts.

Because at some point, security stops being just financial.

Sometimes real security is the person who stays after the breakdown. The person who shares a meal with you. The person who listens while your life feels shattered on the table like broken ceramic pieces.

Maybe that’s what makes life fragile.

Not the fact that things break.

But the fact that we keep loving, protecting, and depending on breakable things anyway.

Fragile • Darem Placer

⌨ ᴛʸᵖⁱⁿᵍ ᴏᵘᵗ ᵒᶠ ᵗʰᵉ ʙˡᵘᵉ ᵈᵃʳᵉᵐ ᵐᵘˢⁱᶜ ᵇˡᵒᵍ

Las Piñas • 119th Founding and 29th Cityhood Anniversary • March 27, 2026

We grow up thinking life should always feel good, but it doesn’t. Some days are light, some are heavy. Same place, same people, different outcome. That’s normal.

Not everything is meant to be exciting, and not everything is meant to be sweet. There are people who just show up and do the work, quiet, repetitive, real. It may look plain, but it builds something.

At some point, we question things. We look for more flavor, more meaning, but not everything needs to feel intense to matter.

And then there’s truth. Once we start bending it, everything becomes unclear, even if nothing around us changes.

So the difference is not the place. It’s what we choose. Life will not always taste the way we want, but it still shapes us.

Years ago, I wrote a song about this—simple, but it stayed with me.

Salts of Las Piñas
July 21, 1989

This is the place where I grew up
Where most of the people I know
But there are some bitter ends of life
And you can’t always taste the spice

In the blue sky, the birds fly
But at times dark clouds pass by
You’ll never see the glory of the kingdom
If you engage in powerful lies

Las Piñas, just a taste of
The salts of Las Piñas

In the morning, workers make piles
Of the crystals for refection
I used to argue about consumption
But you can’t always taste the spice

The Rise and Disappearance of Salt in Las Piñas

Before the 1970s, the salt industry in Las Piñas was active, with salt beds spread across coastal areas, especially near the Zapote–Bacoor side. By the late 1970s into the 1980s, it began to decline as urbanization grew, land was converted, and real estate became more profitable than salt production. By the late 1980s to early 1990s, only the last traces remained, with the industry nearly gone. From the mid-1990s onward, salt production had fully disappeared as Las Piñas shifted into a more residential and commercial area, a change that accelerated after it became a city in 1997. This decline was driven by land conversion, pollution and changing coastlines, cheaper imported salt, and the availability of more stable income from other jobs.

⌨ ᴛʸᵖⁱⁿᵍ ᴏᵘᵗ ᵒᶠ ᵗʰᵉ ʙˡᵘᵉ ᵈᵃʳᵉᵐ ᵐᵘˢⁱᶜ ᵇˡᵒᵍ

Tag: life

Fragile

Not Everything Has to Taste Good