Sano di Pietro or Ansano di Pietro di Mencio
Saint Anthony the Abbot in the Wilderness
(ca. 1440)

"I'm better off without your perfection or mine."

I once believed that Prosperity could only emerge after something close to perfection occurred. Some previously unlikely convergence would produce some utterly surprising manifestation, some outcome seemingly approaching perfection, and Prosperity would thereafter reign. These weren’t completely chance encounters, but they often arrived unexpectedly, initially surprising the benefactors before becoming a seeming birthright. None are precisely born prosperous, and each must learn a few hard-earned lessons before they can properly incorporate the lived practice of Prosperity into a daily routine. Perhaps the key realization on the way to experiencing Prosperity comes when the naive notion that you must first achieve perfection crumbles. A precious form of acceptance replaces that naive notion, what I’ll call Accschleptance: the acceptance that good enough might, in fact, be good enough, that perfection is not only not required but also unlikely ever to appear. The forms within which Prosperity inevitably appears do not include perfection. Therefore, perfection couldn’t possibly be required as a necessary precondition for Prosperity to emerge.

This realization typically comes as a relief, often after a protracted effort to achieve some essentially unachievable perfection or other. Such notions seem to be built-in features of the human condition and probably cannot be unlearned or prevented from emerging. The route to any place worth inhabiting includes such disappointingly reassuring realizations. Perfection was never required, even though each patron sure seemed to be required to wear a coat and tie or tux. Inside, interactions tend to be more casual than previously imagined, less polished and considerably more human. The public relations campaign that insisted only the anointed need apply turns into myth in an instant of spare acknowledgment. How could anyone have ever gained admittance if the price of admission had ever really been the experience of having previously been living inside? None who ever gained Prosperity were in any way prequalified.

The dogged pursuit of perfection, though, has ruined more potential than it ever achieved. Those who cannot leave poor enough alone cannot maintain the delicate balances Prosperity requires. Those who hold debilitating grudges live lives actively preventing Prosperity from visiting. Those who endlessly prosecute some otherwise long moot court case as if the universe somehow had it out against their interests likewise seem more likely to live along Prosperity’s perimeter than ever to gain entrance inside. Those still on some crusade unlikely to ever liberate a Jerusalem few really care about will also most likely be denied entry into their Prosperity, for they will be too busy chasing empty possibilities to ever ease into Prosperity’s promises. Those who truly believe that humankind was born wicked rather than innocent face perhaps more acceptances than the rest of humanity put together, for those who dedicate themselves to changing human nature choose to lose all possibility of ever prospering. They become, at best, passionate losers by their own choices.

The dirty little secret is that the dirty little secret isn’t dirty. It’s also not tiny in any way. It’s huge! To find balance within imperfection might be the only salvation ever really worth pursuing. To insist upon persistent perfection, certain damnation. This fact seems to offer no good excuse to cease striving, but just a suggestion that the striving might be the significant contributor to the search, much more valuable than any imagined finding. Few arrive, and nobody ever arrives on the terms originally imagined. Likewise, nobody ever stands a chance of arriving if they’re relying upon advice given or purchased with the promise of certain success. These become the self-helpless, disempowered by their belief in their or another’s superpower. Their true superpower might finally prove to have been Accschleptance, or the serial string of Accschleptances that eventually led them into the Prosperity they sought, but with disfiguring warts intact.

The notion that we must reform the human condition has been the strange attraction to the conservative political position, and an absolute enemy of Prosperity wherever and whenever it’s emerged. The rallies against political correctness. The insistence that some people are born better than others. The belief that money matters more than as a medium of exchange. The sense that some were born evil. These beliefs and others each scream a desire to achieve an utterly unnecessary and deleterious perfection none of us actually needs. The salvation we so often seem to seek seems to be the key to our eternal damnation. Our Accschleptances seem like little imperfect blessings we might not actually require, but might more usefully aspire to experience. If I cannot accept who and what I am, I forfeit any possibility of experiencing any at-ease Prosperity. If I insist that you must achieve a perfection only I can imagine—rendering me your judge, jury, and, most likely, chief executioner—then I actively deny you the Prosperity you might otherwise experience. Sometimes, freedom’s just another word for “Fuck you very much. I’m better off without your perfection or mine.”

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz