Jericho Rosales recalls hard life peddling food and collecting trash, asks people to dream amid dark times

Image: Instagram/@mrdavidmilan

As the world struggles against the COVID-19 pandemic, actor Jericho Rosales has stepped up to give fans a ray of hope amid dark times by recounting his journey to success.

Rosales – who used to collect garbage, sell fish and ice buko, among many other undertakings – stressed the importance of dreams, even when these seem impossible to achieve.

“Think a lot of us have stopped dreaming and reaching our goals because of the negative factors around us — poverty, lack of support and the additional uncertainty we get from this pandemic. Or at least we deeply questioned them,” he said on his official Facebook page yesterday, May 18.

“Our tomorrows are filled with questions and cares. It is natural for us to think that way. We all are going through this and it is very hard,” he added.

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“Dreams are dreams because they seem far from reality. It can be easy to forget about them. But with a heart full of hope and a mind filled with positivity, nothing is impossible,” Rosales stressed.

Rags to riches

Rosales recalled how he grew up in poverty: he was born into a poor family, went to six public schools in elementary and high school, and was not able to go to college because he “didn’t know what career meant” and that his family “simply could not afford it.”

Rosales also experienced collecting discarded wires, old newspapers and sold them to junk shops for money “and sometimes cheap cheese curls.” He also collected plastic trash from a dumpsite with his cousin, became a jeepney barker, a pizza boy and a driver.

He added that he only learned to speak English through television and movies, and by forcing himself to read and talk to people, which he said gave him “wonderful ideas and opened my eyes to new possibilities with a clearer vision for my life.”

“Clearly, [I] did not have the ideal life situation. But I had a dream — to get myself and my family out of poverty and have our own house. That was my first major dream. I had faith in God and I also had time. So [I] prayed and prayed and never stopped learning new things. I kept moving. I kept my dream [in front] of me,” Rosales stressed.

He noted that self-education, constantly learning skills, surrounding one’s self with like-minded people and “using your challenges as tools for self-improvement/development are keys to opening doors of opportunities.”

“What we have in our hands is NOW. It holds a lot of power if you know how to use it. It can change your tomorrows. Shaping it starts the moment you tell yourself ‘this is my tomorrow,'” Rosales said. “We also have each other.”

He stressed that dreams will only remain as they are until one does something about them.

“So keep dreaming, keep hoping and keep moving. You are made to be something and a someone for another. I wish all of us a bright future and I’ll do my part to make that happen,” he added. “Di mo kailangan ng tsinelas sa dagat ng pangarap. Naks (You do not need slippers in the sea of dreams).” JB

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