I had a conversation about 30 years ago with a fellow Hungarian. We were both Landmark “graduates” and assisted our asses off.

“Assisting” is a cheap way to feel superior without having to earn your stripes.

He was an artist, a painter, who was in the US because his wife fell ill with cancer, and needed special treatment. In spite of all, she died, and he was stuck here. Didn’t want to return to Venezuela, didn’t want to go back to Hungary, but his existence in the US was touch and go.

He didn’t feel like producing the “art” that had been earning him a living: kitch sold in furniture stores, mass produced by an artist. Slave labor, mind numbing, and killing the artist within.

It was late in the evening, and we chatted, intimately, like friends that we weren’t.

The simile, or analogy, or metaphor, whatever you want to call it, came up:

If you were stranded on an island, how far would you swim to see if there are any ways to escape and return to civilization?
Continue reading “How far from your island are you willing to swim?”