Given the right circumstances, nearly anyone can end up on the wrong side of the law or court system.

Anyone who is desperate enough or who has nothing left to lose will consider and even take actions that have negative legal consequences. Most people are simply fortunate because those circumstances — whatever they may be — never actually manifested in their lives.

But if those circumstances had manifested?

Well…things might have gone a little differently for them.

Everyone has a breaking point.

The Booth at the End

In 2011 I found a series on Hulu called The Booth at the End. It both horrified and mesmerized me. After the first episode, I thought I wouldn’t watch it again because thinking about it afterward disturbed me.

But something about the show drew me back in the next week and I watched until the season ended.

In the series, people sought out a mysterious man who sat in a booth at the end of a diner. Each person was desperate for something they wanted more than anything in the world.

They’d been told The Man could make it happen for a price. A very high price in the form of a task. The task might be something to complete quickly, or it might take a while.

Some of the tasks required the characters to make unimaginable decisions to carry them out and their agony was palpable. Some of the tasks pitted petitioners against one another (unbeknownst to them, of course).

Each person had to regularly check in with The Man to provide updates on how their task was coming along. They were also forced to submit to a series of squirm-inducing questions about how they felt and what they thought as they carried out their tasks.

One woman, deeply conflicted about her task, asked The Man, “Do you make everyone who comes to you hurt someone?” The Man’s soft response was, “No. Only some.”

It was one of the most chillingly sadistic things I’ve heard someone say in a movie or show.

But if the petitioner completed the task The Man assigned to them, they received what they asked for.

How Far?

What made it impossible for me to stop watching The Booth at the End was this question: If you were guaranteed to get an outcome you were desperate for by doing something you found unpleasant, distasteful, or even monstrous…would you do it?

If you knew beyond all doubt that performing the requested action would result in whatever you most wanted, would you do it and find a way to live with what you had done?

  • You’re about to lose your home, putting you and your family on the street.
  • You get the news of your spouse’s terminal illness diagnosis.
  • You’re diagnosed with early-stage dementia.
  • Someone is harming your child and the system is not only failing to protect them but also giving their abuser unsupervised access or even granting custody.

Would you let your family become homeless? Allow your spouse to die? Let yourself slip away from everyone you know and love? Watch your child retreat inside themselves to escape the ongoing abuse or be taken away from you, the protective parent?

Or when The Man opened up his notebook and read the task to you, would you agree to it? Would you do the unthinkable for the good of the outcome?

How far would you go to save someone you love? Far enough to go to prison for it?

Everyone has a breaking point somewhere inside them.