Staring out across the broad swath of sea, focused on the freighter cleaving the horizon, awash in a rain squall not yet acquainted with the island, I found myself wondering aloud how I came to this place. Before me lay the great expanse of blue margarita water, teaming with life that I could only have begun to imagine in my National Geographic retardedness; behind me, an 800 foot waterfall crashed down the Waiapia cliffs. Great gusts of mist buffeted me, swirling its way to the rocks below.

It was just over a year ago that I left my corporate employment, having become disillusioned by the greed, dishonesty and narcissistic career-building that I had witnessed around me; that I had become a part of. It was a situation, in talking with the many people I have met since, typical of the American corporate experience; a scenario claiming the best intentions of good people and turning them into ladder-climbing egocentrics.

My journey to this island could (and should) be traced back to a time prior to my abandonment of the corporate lifestyle.

I married young, at the age of 21, to an equally young and similarly naïve woman. I dreamt of stardom and chased it as a musician. She dreamt of being an artist, and sold it for an opportunity to prove her love for me by working full-time as a payroll clerk. I didn’t see it that way then. It is only now that I’ve come to that regrettable conclusion. I failed pretty miserably as a musician, being a bit too right brained for Metal, a bit too impressionable for artistic truth, and, as it were, a bit too eager to make the next move. My musical career culminated in the birth of my first child, whereupon I summarily quit the band, bought a house, and sought a respectable corporate job.

This change was monumental, for it spelled the literal death of a youthful dream. Like the biblical character Samson, I cut my hair and soon lost my source of personal power.