Just realized something that's been bothering me since late February. When geopolitical fires break out thousands of miles away, the heat finds its way to the most unexpected places — like a sari-sari store in Bulacan or a tricycle driver's daily earnings in Iloilo.

Most people watched the Middle East escalation as a headline. For me, working in microfinance and seeing how 2.5 million women entrepreneurs operate, it's different. I see it through the lens of a mother deciding whether to pay her loan installment or use that money to feed her kids and get them to school.

This isn't my first rodeo watching this pattern. The Philippines has been here before, and history keeps repeating itself in ways that hurt the people with the least cushion to absorb shocks.

Back in 1973, the Arab Oil Embargo hit and oil prices basically quadrupled overnight. For an import-dependent country like ours, that was brutal. Jeepney fares shot up. The poor, who spend most of their income on transport and food, got crushed. Then came 1990. Over 100,000 Filipinos were working in Kuwait when Saddam Hussein invaded — the government had to scramble together a billion-peso repatriation fund just to bring people home. It took years for Gulf deployments to recover. The economic damage to families was severe and long-lasting.

But here's what's different now: the scale is bigger and the endgame is completely unclear. This isn't one targeted strike — it's shaping up as a protracted conflict affecting multiple Middle East countries where millions of Filipinos work and send money home.

I see three critical shockwaves heading our way.

First: oil. Everything moves on it — jeepneys, tricycles, fishing boats, electricity. When oil goes up, everything goes up. Analysts are already warning that a prolonged conflict could disrupt up to 20% of global oil supply. The scariest scenario? The Strait of Hormuz gets blocked. That's the chokepoint where roughly a fifth of the world's daily oil transits. If that happens, we're looking at the worst supply shock in decades. In practical terms: imagine the only road to your market gets cut off. Every vendor takes a longer, more expensive route. Transport costs spike. And who pays at the end? The family buying their kilo of rice and fish on a daily budget.

Second: the peso will weaken and inflation will accelerate. This always happens when global uncertainty spikes — investors flee to dollars. A weaker peso means everything we import costs more, and we import almost everything. The central bank was already forecasting 3.6% inflation for this year before this crisis hit. That number is almost certainly getting revised upward now. And here's the real problem: the BSP was in an easing cycle, cutting rates to help small businesses and microenterprises. If inflation re-accelerates, they might have to freeze or reverse those cuts. For my clients operating on razor-thin daily margins, even a small bump in transport and food costs can turn a viable business into a distress situation.

Third: the OFW lifeline is threatened. Think of remittances as the monthly lifeline one hardworking family member sends home. For the Philippines, that's roughly $40 billion a year — critical income for millions of low-income families. The problem? That family member is working right in the middle of where things are unstable. The Department of Foreign Affairs estimates around 2.41 million Filipinos across Middle East countries are in the crossfire. We're already seeing major disruptions — Dubai International Airport has flight cancellations and stranded passengers. If this drags on, employers shut down operations. Airports close. When OFWs get retrenched, remittances stop.

What strikes me most is the parallel to COVID-19. That crisis taught us three hard lessons. The impact was global and nationwide. The timeline was paralyzing uncertainty. And the effects weren't acute — they were chronic. Long COVID ravaged bodies; "long economic COVID" is still ravaging microenterprises trying to recover.

This Middle East situation has all three attributes. The scale is already global and nationwide. Oil prices are up. Food costs and freight rates are following. OFW repatriations have started. The endgame is unknown — military analysts and diplomats can't even agree on what the end state should look like. And the economic consequences, especially for an import-dependent archipelago like ours, won't resolve quickly.

Here's what keeps me up at night: Philippine inflation never dropped to negative since COVID. Meaning low-income households are still dealing with the same high prices from the pandemic. Now those pressures could get worse. Families operating on daily cash flows are already stretched thin.

I'm writing this because I believe we need to start thinking about concrete last-mile solutions now. The microfinance sector, poverty alleviation practitioners, policymakers — we need to be proactive about cushioning this shock for the most vulnerable families. History has already written this script before. We know how it ends if we don't act.