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I want to say that my year flew by as quickly as I have written, but that wasn’t the case at all. Nearly every day seemed to pass by in slow motion. I could have written another hundred pages filled with war stories from the guys at the shelter: stories about the guy who got stabbed outside the shelter with a six-inch blade and came to the soup kitchen the next day showing off his wound; stories about the move where we had to dodge dog bombs throughout the entire house; stories about the move where the customer backed into the mailbox, pulled forward, and got out, again leaving his car in reverse and sending it back into the mailbox; stories about out-of-town moves to Florida and Virginia and the side move where I accompanied Brooklyn Bonesy (a narcoleptic pothead) to Tennessee; more woes and good times with BG; the crack-ring bust in our neighborhood. And the list goes on.

If you had asked me in July of 2006 what I had the potential to accomplish during this project, I would have told you what I thought I could do, but indeed, in the end, I exceeded my own expectations. I had no idea what to expect in Charleston, and I must say it was quite a learning experience. When I began, I could never have guessed that I would have the experiences that I had or meet the people that I did. I didn’t imagine that homeless shelters like Crisis Ministries offered the services that they do, and I certainly didn’t imagine that guys like Marco and Phil Coleman and Easy E and “Hustle Man” even existed in those shelters. I had assumed that everybody would be old, hairy, and smelly.

And later, outside of the shelter, I had no idea that guys like Derrick and BG, having come from the same rural hometown with limited opportunity, could have such different attitudes about life. Although I speculated, I never would have imagined that the cultural differences between BG and I would lead to such drama, and I certainly had no idea that my time in Charleston would end so abruptly. I was clueless.

But, in the end, what did I really learn about the vitality of the American Dream? What conclusions am I able to draw on the persistence of poverty in America? What am I able to take away from my experience? And most importantly, where do we go from here?

For starters, I learned that we are the product of our surroundings—our families, our peers, and our environment. If a child grows up among poor attitudes, zero ambition, and parents that say, “I ain’t got no sugar,” then he or she is probably going to one day have a poor attitude, zero ambition, and is going to say, “I ain’t got no sugar.” Many break out, of course. There are countless stories of PhDs and corporate executives and attorneys that have broken free from the reins of the lower classes in spite of their humble beginnings. It happens all the time, but the odds are most certainly stacked against them. I consider myself even more fortunate now than when I began my project: my parents are educated and loving and they showed me the way. Now, more than ever, I understand that things could have been much different for me in my life. I was lucky.

I learned that life is a bitch. Everybody faces adversity. Everybody. Nobody is immune. I met—and lived alongside—poor people in Charleston who were miserable and others who were delighted with their lives. By the same token, I’ve met millionaires in my life who have found true happiness just as I have met millionaires who are some of the least happy people on the planet simply because they don’t know how to handle their wealth or, worse, they have never even had the opportunity to discover what happiness is in the first place. Adversity attacks at every level.

Yeah, life is a bitch for sure. Or actually, let me rephrase that: life can be a bitch. It’s all about how we look at things. Moving furniture sucks. Breaking your toe or suffering through seven days of diarrhea sucks. I would have loved a day off, time to relax and rest, maybe a vacation.