I haven’t been able to get the image of a middle-aged woman, Manang Linda, in a grocery store out of my head. She was there in the aisle, a small piece of paper in hand, just staring at a can of fruit cocktail like it was a math problem she couldn’t solve. She wasn’t planning a feast—just trying to piece together a simple Noche Buena meal.

When she turned to me, as if she knew me, she said, “Alam mo, parang hindi na para sa amin ang Paskong ito,” her voice was so quiet with sadness and surrender. (“You know, it’s as if this Christmas is no longer for us”).

That’s why what Trade and Industry Secretary Cristina Roque said didn’t seem to be a mistake. It was comparable to a door slamming shut. Neither was it getting a number wrong. Was the Secretary watching a completely different movie than the rest of us?

“Kasya ang P500, but it depends on the number of family members. Usually ang family members na kasya itong P500 is mom, dad, and two children,” she was quoted as saying in a recent media interview.

From where she sits in her office, it might have been just a statistic. But from where we stand? It is a verdict on whether our struggles are even seen. While that number was being discussed in some comfortable conference room, many Manang Lindas were in their kitchen, deciding if a whole chicken was too much, if maybe just some wings would do.

Let’s break down what that P500 really means for us.

You know what that P500 feels like? A broken promise. When someone in the Secretary’s position gives a number, we don’t hear a suggestion. What reverberates is, “This is what should be possible.”

So, when it’s so far from what’s real, it doesn’t just make us doubt her math. It makes us wonder if she ever had to choose between the ham and the cheese, knowing you can’t have both. With prices going crazy, hearing that number now was like telling someone who’s drowning that the water’s only knee deep.

We live in a real world, not in Excel files.

We don’t shop with a theory. We shop with our last few hundred pesos, feeling the weight of every coin. P500? That might get the pancit and the sauce. But the queso de bola? That becomes a story from Christmases past. The ham? A “next year” dream. You end up not building a meal, but cutting it down until there’s no joy left in it. Iba ang presyo sa papel, Sec. Iba ang presyo sa puso. (“The price on paper is different from the price in the heart”).

The truth isn’t in a report but in a grocery bag.

If you really want to get it, don’t go with cameras. Go alone. Lose the suit. Wander through a palengke and watch. Watch the mother carefully place three single hotdogs on the counter. Watch the construction worker buy one sachet of coffee at a time. That’s where you’ll find the real data—not in a chart, but in the sigh of a father trying to figure out how to make a holiday feel like one.

So, what now? This is your chance.

Not a “clarification” because it just adds insult to injury. It should be a genuine turn. Don’t just manage the people’s anger, which is a signal that the whole system needs fixing.

Go after the people who are jacking up prices for fun. Cut the red tape that’s choking our local farmers and producers. Make those suggested retail prices mean something—not words on paper, but a real shield for our wallets. Don’t just tell us life is affordable. Make it affordable.

We, Filipinos, are not asking for a superhero. We’re asking for a human being who gets it. We don’t need government officials to have all the answers. We just need you to understand the question: “How do we get through the week with a little bit of joy left?”

Secretary, perfection is not the goal. Presence is. We need to know that you see the people’s lives, struggles–-not the numbers on a screen, but the people behind them.

That human connection is everything. Start by hearing us. Follow through by rolling up your sleeves. Make us feel that you’re not just above us, but beside us.