Six figures? Paid off house? Fully-funded retirement? Island in the tropics?
The other day, my wife and I were driving home and started talking about a post I ran on FreeMoneyFinance explaining how prosperity–contrary to our natural inclinations–actually can make contentment more difficult to find. (Read post here) Anyway, as we were talking we realized that, more often than not, most people don’t consider themselves prosperous. In all reality, almost every American would be considered prosperous by the overwhelming majority of the world–yet, despite such abundance, we rarely consider ourselves as prosperous. The more I thought about it, the more it seems like we tend to define “prosperity” as “more money than I have”. (Which goes to show our natural inclinations towards discontent…but that for another day!)
Something is amiss (or perhaps prosperity has nothing to do with money and possessions?) Be what it may, I think we don’t really call ourselves prosperous because, in all honesty, we have never taken the time to define the word. We aren’t comfortable referring to ourselves by a label that–for its all its apparent clarity and allure–really has no clear definition whatsoever! Without thinking it through for ourselves, we will tend to think of prosperity simply as “more than I have”. Self-defeating from the start, this makes it impossible to attain no matter how much we have/make/accomplish.
So what does “prosperity” mean? Successful? Rich? True to beliefs? The more I try to think about it, the more the word eludes me. It seemed like an interesting thing to throw out at our readers. So, this post is yours:
- How do you define “prosperity”?
- Do you consider yourself “prosperous”?
About Rob Kuban