In his peripheral vision, to the left and right, shapes were moving, approaching. All he could do was spit blood and cry. And he cried hard, bawled until it changed to loud laughter. Laughing at his weak, pathetic self.

He was discovering his center.

Backpacking through Argentina, hitchhiking from one fueling station to the next, devoid of conflict, of violence, in search of something more than what he once believed was an existence. Seeking the meaning of words spoken by his ailing mother. Getting mugged in a dirt street on the outskirts of Santiago de Chile. Rolled for two thousand, maybe three thousand, dollars. In America, it was enough to cover a middle-class household’s monthly mortgage. Groceries, car payment and utilities, maybe a few movies and dinner out with the wife on a weekend. Here, in this desert outpost of a struggling country, that was several months of cushion. How many simple pleasures of life had Jack missed in his pursuit of the almighty dollar? Reflecting back on his life, more than he could count.

His Rolex watch, ID, insurance card, all his money—gone, except for his passport in his pack, and what he’d hidden in his left sock, which he must now spend on nourishment.

Yellow corn, ground between stones and roasted over coals. Woman’s hands, callused and sun scorched, working the blade through peppers, onions, tomatoes, pushing back a strand of hair as she adds beans. Forearming sweat from her moist cheeks, she wraps the hash of vegetables and legumes up like a gift for the starved and scavenging, handing the fresh delicacy to Jack. The juices trickle down the stubbly beard, burning the scraped flesh, but the ripe taste triggers something he has not known since he was a kid: recognition of his own hunger. Of being fed. He has worked his life away so that he might never again know that feeling of want or need.

What he realizes in that moment is something he had forgotten: appreciation.

Before all this, the goal was money. Not to struggle like his mother, who had worked three jobs to keep a shingled roof over her and her boy’s heads. To keep fresh food on the table and a clean house and a warm bed. And she had.

On the day she died, lying on coarse hospital sheets amid the smell of disinfectant and the beep of monitors, her blue-veined hand cold in his warm palm, she spoke the last words she ever would to Jack: “Run. Run and never look back.”

He had wanted to laugh. Run? Run from what? After all he had amassed. A 6,500-square-foot house. Vacation home in Florida. Cars. A secure retirement. No want or need unfulfilled. But still he worked. Sixteen-hour days, sometimes eighteen.

That is what he remembered on all fours in the dust, watching those faded red Converse high-tops scampering away.