I crossed into Florida on a little-used highway, 35 in Georgia and 141 in Florida. I came to a beat little place called Jennings with a police, fire department, and town hall all in one building. There was a burned-out bank across the street, and an old grocery store. In a small-town grocery store, they just tell you to walk into the meat department to fill up your water bottles. The meat department is a man standing at a table cutting up chicken parts from a box, and an old-time spring scale with the numbers in fine print, with an aura of precision that modern scales try to imitate with digital readouts. The mechanical precision of an old scale is much more aesthetic than the electronic accuracy we have today.

Standing outside the grocery, walking in the sun to keep warm on a Florida January morning, a man came my way. He had come to ask for money, but said after finding out where I was from, “Oh, I’m homeless, too.”

I did not feel I deserved to have him include me in his class. There is a dignity to a kind of homelessness, that I have not earned. Not down-and-out derelict homelessness, but homelessness for trying to stay honest and true in a society that too often rewards falseness.

“My name’s Wilton,” he said, offering me a hand.

“I’m Eric.”

“Hello, Mr. Eric,” he said in his green leather hat and orange leather jacket. We started talking, and I was humbled by his experience. “I’m homeless out of pride,” he said.

I asked him exactly what that meant.

“I ain’t going to call home, or ask for welfare.”

I understood the pride he was talking about, not arrogant foolish pride, but dignified, experienced, self-respecting pride. I asked where he slept, and he said there was an old abandoned building with a room that he used. He had come from Chicago, hitchhiking. I asked him if that was interesting.

“More than interesting, oh, more than interesting,” he said.

“In a good way?”

“Yes.”

“Is it as dangerous as everyone says these days?”

“No, no.” He was shown crazy acts of kindness, and he said it is usually people who have the least who give you the most. He was let off somewhere on his way from Chicago, and an old woman took him in for the night. She let him bathe, and fed him and gave him a place to sleep. All this from a woman who really had very little. In the morning she sent him off with some food. Looking in the bag later on, he found a hundred-dollar bill folded into a napkin between three ham sandwiches. That is the most beautiful kind of generosity, generosity for its own sake and not for recognition’s sake.

Coming through Louisiana, he ran into some Klansmen. A pickup with classic redneck rebel flags and shotguns pulled up, with a sign on the front, “Nigger Read, Nigger Leave”. They gave him a ride, and even fed him. They left him with a warning not to be found in the area at night. I asked him why he thought they helped him instead of hurting him. He looked down and thought for a minute.

“Because God made them to. There’s still a little bit of God in them.”

Long ago, around the time Buddhism was established in India, there were wandering monks. People who were dissatisfied with the increasingly economic society would cast off their possessions, and wander through the forests surrounding the villages. There they would meditate and practice various forms of worship, searching for meaning in existence. They were respected by village dwellers, who gave them food as they needed it. In return, the wandering holy men imparted their wisdom to the townspeople, sharing their discoveries. This is still true today. Some of the wisest people I have met are wanderers on the fringe of society, wise because free from the trappings of modern society, free from possessions but the clothes on their back, they see what is really important in life. They may have less than anyone else, but they have far more wisdom than the average person. The loss of all possessions either breaks a person or makes him wise.