There was a man whose only possessions were a straw hat, a stubbly beard, a walking stick, and the clothes he wore. He came from dusty nowhere and was going dusty nowhere. He was taut, knitted together tight as a new leather couch with an old weathered look. His Velcro-hair caught and kept everything that met it, but had begun to lose its color; ash on dying coals.

One day a kind man of means – feeling kind and of means – invited the bearded man into his home for a meal and a bed for the night. The bearded man accepted the invitation and entered the home of the kind man. The kind man, being of means, owned a good, solid house built on the foundations that the kind man had spent years putting together with his own hands. The kind man, a geologist, had a large collection of beautiful rocks spread throughout his home. A large, gold-specked rock caught the eye of the bearded man. “Fool’s gold” said the kind man and went to the kitchen. 

That evening the kind man served the bearded man hot food, and plenty to drink. While the bearded man ate and drank, he, without knowing his own reasoning, started to become very angry at the very kind man. He became angry at the warm house; angry at the good food; angry at the very kindness of the kind man. The kind man noticed the spirit of anger growing inside of the bearded man, but continued on serving. He told the bearded man that once he too had nothing, and was nothing. The kind man began to extol the virtues of cleanness and started a bath for the bearded man who was indeed very dirty. While the kind man knelt down in service to his invited guest, the bearded man took the jagged, gold-speckled rock and brought it down with his full force onto the head of the very kind, now dead, man.

The bearded man looked around. The house, and all that was in it, was now his. He had been a guest, now he was an owner. He put all the best rocks into a beautiful pile in the middle of the living room. He romped and raved and drank and ate and in all ways conceivable he consumed his new possessions until he, at last, became very tired. He looked around again now at all the destruction he had wrought and lo-and-behold it was very good. He noticed the straw hat and walking stick he had brought with him into the house. These were his first possessions; they were his most cherished. He placed them along with the bespeckled and bloody instrument used to acquire his riches in the place of honor above the mantel of the roaring fire. Exhausted, he lay down on his beautiful pile of rocks, scratched his beard, and slept.