What Does Prosperity Look Like Today?
I am 39 years old, gay, black, autistic, a recovering sex addict and this is what prosperity means to me today:
Prosperity is freedom from labels. My labels do not mean anything about what’s possible for me. I do not have any hang-ups (anymore) about who I am.
Prosperity is not living up to anyone else’s idea of success. There is a lot of wisdom from those who have gone before me, but I do not buy into anyone else’s ideology of success. Not the government, not my school, no one. Success is what I say it is. It is purely my creation and it’s intentionally determined. My determination has qualities of joy, freedom, the feeling of abundance, peace of mind and the feeling of making a difference, ability to act and respond. Versus stress, anxiety, panic, resentment, secrecy, shame, confusion, hopelessness.
Prosperity has the quality of owning my own time versus feeling someone else owns my time. I feel that the activities in my life are things I have created myself.
Prosperity is not doing life alone. My Wisdom Council, my recovery program, my husband, clients, and friends. I have rich, diverse relationships that contribute to me, and I, them.
Prosperity is having resources that give me options and a balanced life. Resources for food, health, holidays, rent, emergencies. These resources can be monetary, people, or objects.
Prosperity is my ability to live a creative life everywhere. All aspects of life are creative. I am also able to respond to life creatively. It is my ability to create and to respond to life in life’s terms.
Prosperity is basking in my relationship with a power greater than myself. If everything external is taken away, the one thing that cannot be taken away (unless I am mentally incapacitated) is my relationship with God. Everything else in life is a bonus.
Prosperity is having all my basic needs taken care of my physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, and intellectual needs. This is enough. Anything more than that is a bonus. To have food, water, health, a clean home, oxygen, a fulfilled mind and loving relationships is enough.
Prosperity is my ability to feel and experience all of this. I am prosperous. I feel it everywhere. Prosperity is my ability to return to this mind set when I forget I am prosperous. Prosperity is active, not passive.
Prosperity is there even when things are not going my way, when I am destitute, and my basic needs are not met; I still have hope. To create hope by admitting my hopelessness to allow God in. To lose hope is anti-prosperity. To lose hope is to become hopeless and no power can change it.
There are different faces of prosperity for me as my external world changes. It seems to me that prosperity has different dimensions:
- the bare minimum of prosperity is hope
- having my basic needs met is prosperity
- prosperity is the ability to meet life on life’s terms
- anything more than the above is beyond prosperity
But faith in God is the highest form of prosperity. This relationship is everything. It trumps all else. I reflect on the Holocaust survivors, when they were treated as less than human, but their faith kept them going. That in itself was life at the highest compared to a person with ‘every’ external convenience. My preference is to have this kind of faith with the external conveniences. But how does humankind develop such faith, such a relationship? It seems to me it can’t happen in a vacuum. It seems that those who do have such faith have experienced great pain.
Thoughts?