For three years in succession, his crops were total failures. The rule of probability said a calamity would come to pass once in six years. Yet here he was with three in a row. "Someone up there must have abandoned me," he muttered.
Top it all, his family had disintegrated all at once after 25 years of marriage. First, his wife ran away with the fertilizer salesman. His biggest dream rested on his two children in the middle of college. But suddenly, he was informed his favorite daughter dropped out to live-in with a married politician. In the same month, his son left the university as a drug dependent.
"There is nothing to live for," he confided to his best friend. "I plan to commit suicide."
"I understand your heartaches," said his bossom friend. "But you know I am going to dissuade you from taking your own life. It is not that easy or simple to kill oneself."
"I have figured it all out," replied the determined farmer. "And to the smallest detail. I will do it on the bridge spanning our biggest river. I plan to tie a rope on the girdle with the other end wound around my neck. By jumping, I will hang by my neck. But before that I will pour over my body a healthy dose of lambanog (fermented palm wine almost pure alcohol). I will burn myself. To be even more sure, I will shoot myself as I burn. Then jump to hang for my final breath."
The friend mulled over what to say. Slowly, he reacted, "I can see you are decided and really prepared. Still, think it over. I believe life is worth living with all its problems. Even if you are now down, eventually you will be up."
"Paalam (Good-bye), my dearest friend," the farmer declared with a tone of finality. "Tomorrow, by this time, I will be in heaven without the pains of earthly life."
Two days later, the farmer was still alive. When they met, he related with excitement, "I think God wants me to live. Imagine, I tied one end of the rope on the bridge and the other around my neck. Then I doused myself with the lambanog and set myself on fire. In a split second, I pulled the trigger of the revolver on my head. Instead of hitting my temple, the bullet cut through the rope. When I jumped, I fell straight to the water below and extinguished the fire."
"Then what happened?" inquired the friend with great expectation.
"Well, it’s a good thing I know how to swim. Otherwise I would have drowned!"
