Jerrold Pete Mangliwan—one of the Paralympians who took pride in representing the Philippines in Tokyo Paralympics 2020. I was able to have a chat with him prior to dressing him up for @jeromelorico collaboration with @jfmanila fashion film shot in my hometown. He mentioned a lot of the shared struggles we go through living in a developing country. Before the shoot, he asked me if I could hold something in a plastic bag. Inside were these wheelchair racing gloves he made. I looked at these sculptures and could only imagine how he crafted them to fit his mold through materials melted by heat. I kept admiring his resourceful being but In the back of my head I couldn’t stop thinking that these are exactly the lengths we’d have to tolerate to become the product of our aspirations. How many times do we need to relegate to make our desires of seeking better opportunities tangible? He reminded me that he is just one of the many undervalued sectors who fight for visibility in our nation. In the grand scheme of things, thriving through shared struggles should be the catalyst to foster compassion towards each other.