What is Prosperity?

In Western society, and now almost globally, we have adopted the concept of steady, incremental growth that drives profit, that drives growth, that drives profit. The endgame — more profit. More money. More of more.

It isn’t just about faceless corporations. It’s about you and me. We as individuals have come to expect more of more. In the 1950s, a single car, a single television and a toy for the kids at Christmas was prosperity. And in 1938, the goal, as defined by President Harry Truman, was “a chicken in every pot” — in the years where poverty was rampant, adequate food was prosperity.

Today, we need more money because we believe we need more stuff. We have to work harder and travel further. To do our jobs we need better clothes. We need a bigger, newer truck or car. Our children need care so we can do that work. When we get home, we rush those kids to sports, dance, math camp…so they can be trained to achieve, to equip them to drive prosperity for themselves and their families. We have abdicated responsibility for almost every task needed to sustain normal life, just so we have more time to earn more. Are we prospering, just to prosper?

What if we worked so we could have more time instead of more stuff? What if we kept what we owned longer. It would need to be made to last. What if we grew more of what we eat? We would need time and patience. We’d learn things that could sustain us, even if the systems we’ve built to look after us faltered. We might have pride in the act of creating our independence. Our children might learn the focus of having a real conversation — with pauses and moments of thoughtful silence. They might even play…outside. What if prosperity was time that drove quality of life, that drove time?