Unknown Egyptian Artist of the Ptolemaic Period
Statue of Horus
(332–30 BCE)

"Prosperity won't necessarily make anything easy, but it might render pretty much everything easier."

I began this series by classifying Prosperity as probably the goal, the attainment of which might serve as at least a prominent sub-theme of this work, if not the underlying purpose. In the week and a half since I started this effort, though, my perspective has shifted. What if Prosperity doesn’t qualify as an endpoint objective? Perhaps it works better if I consider it to be Foundational, table stakes in a larger, more dynamic puzzle. Would anyone be satisfied with a static and stable Prosperity, or would achieving it not open up otherwise unimaginable possibilities? Abraham Maslow long ago proposed what he labeled a Hierarchy of Needs. In it, he imagined human needs arrayed from lower to higher. He speculated that before satisfying the lower-order needs, the higher-order ones might remain out of reach. For instance, nobody seriously pursues enlightenment on an empty stomach, or so he insisted. In practice, of course, enlightenment might be best pursued on an empty stomach, and something else must propel a novice to chase after higher forms of consciousness. But what if—and I’m not insisting, like Maslow did, that this must be the case—what if I’m better off imagining Prosperity as being one of those lower-order needs as opposed to being of the highest order? What might happen then?

Prosperity becomes more a context than a purpose. A target, certainly, but not an end-all or even a be-all objective. It might serve as a gate, one that, once passed through, enables investigating realms unavailable to those not yet supported by its presence. A step stool. Prosperity’s importance might increase within this frame, for if it proves to be Foundational, much more becomes possible beyond the relatively simple achievement of it as an end state. Prosperity might produce possibility, and this property alone might render it both more precious as well as more achievable than I’d initially imagined. It lends a strategic dimension to its pursuit and its presence, and also a subtle preciousness. Because it would serve as “mere” prologue, we might reasonably expect it to prove to be a force multiplier, just that much more important because of the otherwise unavailable resources that become accessible once it’s achieved. This notion also strongly suggests that Prosperity might be better imagined as an investment rather than as a purchase. Pursuing Prosperity, then, wouldn’t just entail cost. It could be pursued reasonably as if it would naturally produce returns rather than just expenses, just like any Fundamental does.

But as with any investment, return isn’t necessarily guaranteed, though some behaviors seem to increase the likelihood that an investment intended to induce Prosperity pays off. Patience seems to be required regardless. One of my nephews and his bride bought a brand new car the week they were married, a car they certainly couldn’t afford. They reasoned, I guess, as I’m sure that I once reasoned, too, that if I was married, I must be grown up enough to afford a new car. This assumption didn’t turn out to be true, as a few lower-order needs became much more prominent under the influence of that new car payment. Even the license proved to be beyond their meager budget. That car went back to the dealer, minus the down payment and associated expenses, and my nephew and his new bride continued learning how to behave like grown-ups, a pursuit in which, with time, effort, and patience, they ultimately succeeded. Prosperity rarely comes as effortlessly as initially imagined.

Prosperity also has much less to do with arriving on anybody’s Easy Street than one might imagine. Considerable additional conditions also come with any promising achievement. I’ve told the story before about how I held myself back from becoming a writer because I couldn’t, for the life of me, learn to properly use a keyboard. My penmanship was equally abysmal. It wasn’t until I decided to ignore the necessity that learning how to keyboard had seemed and just got on with writing that I was ever able to produce anything worth sharing. Decades later, I type no better than I did before I chose to consider what I already possessed to represent Prosperity for me. I eventually produced something I sincerely felt might have been worth sharing. In this case, Prosperity might have been nothing more than a mindset I had always been free to turn on or off as needed. I just hadn’t learned that essential life lesson and skill yet.

Once I passed myself permission to type anyway, I inhabited a wholly different universe. Before, I could seemingly only see what I couldn’t achieve. After, my windshield filled with previously only distantly imagined possibilities, some of which, surprisingly, actually proved achievable. That cognitive Prosperity didn’t quite resolve all the difficulties our universe has always carried. It might not have realistically lessened the net burden existing under the heavens, but it opened a thin slice of enormous possibility for me. That seemed to be plenty. The notion that Prosperity must be all-encompassing seems to be one of the more challenging barriers to entry into Prosperity that anyone probably faces. It seems crazy that my first success as a writer came well before any of my writing was accepted for publication. It came when I finally felt affluent enough, as the pauper I still was, to decide to forego the effort I knew in my heart I would never successfully complete. I just went ahead and tried it anyway, without the certification I had convinced myself was necessary, but ultimately, apparently, wasn’t. Prosperity appeared when I accepted my talents as they were, a clearly delusional conviction that nonetheless propelled me onward.

Prosperity might just be that notion, the sense that imagined limits needn’t necessarily limit anything. The freedom to imagine the rules that might just work, and then invoke the authority to personally implement and practice them. It might be that nobody can do this work for anybody else. It’s personal. This tactic might not allow any twenty-year-old newlywed to afford a brand-new car, but the world tends to be more or less self-leveling once Prosperity starts rearing its head. It seems a form of levitation, not necessarily universally dependable, but nonetheless situationally useful. Never necessarily the end-all I’d naively imagined it might be before, but a definite leg up toward higher-order levels of delivery and satisfaction after. Prosperity won’t necessarily make anything easy, but it might render pretty much everything easier.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz