A man can spend ten years climbing the ladder, buy a penthouse with a city view, wear a solid gold watch, and still feel like he is starving to death at midnight. In Japan, young men are waking up to a brutal truth about money and loneliness. You work eighty hours a week to prove your worth. You buy the luxury coat, the framed art on the wall, and a commercial-grade stainless steel refrigerator the size of a bedroom closet. On social media, everybody envies your life. Then one Tuesday night at 11 PM, you come home to a dark apartment and pull open the heavy door of that giant refrigerator. The white LED light blinds you, and there is nothing inside. No leftovers wrapped in foil. No half-eaten fruit. Nobody waiting in the kitchen to ask if you ate dinner yet. When we are insecure, we pile up expensive things like armor because we are terrified that nobody would love us if we had nothing. Even the bandages we used to hide our bruises are gone. Real wealth is not an oil painting in a silent mansion. Real wealth is trading a wad of cash for a five-dollar bouquet of wildflowers, walking up the concrete stairs of a cramped middle-class apartment, and opening the door to a room where someone is happy you came home.

On August 21, 2015, high-speed train 9364 was racing toward Paris at 180 miles per hour with 554 passengers on board. A terrorist walked out of the train restroom carrying an AKM assault rifle, a Luger pistol, a box cutter, and 270 rounds of ammunition. A brave passenger named Mark Moogalian tried to grab the rifle and was shot through the neck. People ducked behind their seats in terror. Sitting in Car 12 were three twenty-three-year-old childhood friends from California on vacation: U.S. Air Force Airman First Class Spencer Stone, Oregon National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos, and their friend Anthony Sadler. They had no weapons. They were wearing t-shirts and sneakers. Skarlatos tapped Stone on the shoulder and said two words: "Let's go." In samurai swordsmanship, there is a state of mind called Muhyoshi, charging into lethal range without taking a single breath to calculate your odds of survival. Spencer Stone sprinted forty feet straight down the narrow aisle toward the barrel of the assault rifle. The gunman pulled the trigger at point-blank range. The primer failed. Stone tackled him to the floor. As the terrorist slashed Stone's neck and nearly severed his left thumb with the box cutter, Skarlatos wrenched the rifle away and Stone held the gunman in a chokehold until he went unconscious. Then, with blood pouring from his own hand, Stone did not sit down. He knelt beside the dying passenger who had been shot in the neck, shoved two of his own fingers directly into the bullet wound to pinch the severed artery shut, and held it there until the train reached the station. Five hundred and fifty-four people went home to their families that night because three young Americans heard gunshots and ran forward.