Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重
Sojo Henjo,
from the series “One Hundred Satirical Poems (Kyoka neboke hyakushu)”
(19th century)

"Prosperity returns on the littest cats' feet, too, leaving familiar footprints."

Prosperities come and go with some regularity. The Prosperity I enjoy this morning seems unique, different than any previous one, and I could probably say this about any morning, any Prosperity, were I paying close enough attention to discern any differences. I’m mostly not paying all that close of attention because, like you, I have ten thousand distractions vying for my narrow awareness, and I am not always the most perceptive person on the planet. My Prosperities seem far too easy to take for granted. I rarely celebrate them, even though each and every one, if enumerated, should qualify for at least a participation trophy for showing up. They mostly find me unaware and unappreciative of just how deep down fortunate I surely must be. If this does not constitute a crime, I’m innocent. Otherwise, I’m certainly guilty as sin and fully worthy of some sort of punishment.

I started this series, fifty-some mornings ago, noticing that our Prosperity seemed to have gone missing. We had gone, in a scant year and a half of mindless misrule, from possessing an economy that was the envy of every other economy in the world, bar none, except, of course, the single most important economy that should have mustered at least a heartfelt appreciation for the accomplishment, but apparently couldn’t. Rather than vote for even more of the same success, we speculated on the clearly questionable abilities of a man-child who had already convincingly demonstrated that he was nobody’s administrator, a fellow who spouted economic insanity as if it could qualify as forward-looking policy. He quickly plummeted our economy into a dizzying slide it might not recover from in our lifetimes. I knew when I began this series that our Prosperity had been deliberately bartered away so our elected representative could repeatedly violate the emoluments clause of our Constitution without rebuke. I didn’t realize how complicit I had been in that theft. I suspect you didn’t understand how complicit you were, either.

Prosperity does not insist upon anybody’s recognition. It seems mature enough not to require constant ego stroking to survive. It seems perfectly content if it’s never recognized for its contribution, understanding, perhaps, that slippery politicians will always stand up and take credit for any good thing they had absolutely no involvement in creating. Prosperity doesn’t mind, but we probably should, because Prosperity too easily slips out of the grasp of those who don’t at the very least occasionally honor its presence with some sense of gratitude. Prosperity despises few human frailties, and has demonstrated over the ages that it can tolerate much, but oblivious ingratitude might not be counted as one of those frailties well tolerated. Prosperity most often leaves when least noticed, after an extended period of people taking her for granted; after a long period when nobody remembers to say grace or even show an ounce of gratitude, though nobody ever knows precisely where their Prosperity emerged from.

Prosperity departs on the littlest cats’ feet. Nobody notices its exits until it’s so long gone that it’s essentially untraceable. It’s never a matter of rushing down to the corner to catch it before it boards the bus. There’s no evidence of it ever existing by the time most of us even notice it’s missing. We continue to thrive on the same Coyote Continuity that reliably holds Wile E. Coyote after he overruns his mesa, until it doesn’t. Then we might feel the first twinges of regret, made worse by acknowledging our own complicity in the sorry event. We undermined our own Prosperity by demonstrating what might be labeled malign indifference; we violated a sacred trust with numbing indifference, trading the envy of every other nation for a position not worth anybody holding in the community of nations. Oh, the community’s gone to Hell, too, along with that once-reassuring but apparently not reassuring enough envy. Now, we can envy what we used to be, knowing that we fucked it up all by ourselves. Congratulations … or something, kids!

But I wanted to recount how Prosperity came to return to me. This story started back about the time our incumbent was dismantling our Prosperity. It happened that my slippers had worn through. I favor shearling-lined leather slippers. I sometimes forget and wear them outside where they get wet. Eventually, after about a year for me, one of the soles wears through, and I’m forced to buy some new. New sherling slippers, fresh from the box, are Prosperity incarnate. Everything about them quietly screams intimate personal success. They are the most comfortable things imaginable for me, and I’d never imagined that a president’s fiddling with international trade patterns and tariffs might somehow inflict real damage on the most sacred tradition that I personally observe: The Purchasing of the Replacement Slippers. When I referenced the usual site, I discovered that “my” slippers were not available, not at any price. I figured a burp in the market and an enthusiastic Christmas season might have led to a temporary shortage. I couldn’t have imagined, and didn’t, that the disruption would continue for many, many months: a year and more.

That absence of the option to renew my favorite Prosperity struck me deeply. I continued to wear the worn-out slippers, the Hell with the hole. Eventually, the hole became more of a gash, so I found a prior pair of leftovers with a slightly less invasive wound in the bottom of my closet, and wore those until I just couldn’t anymore. I limped around for a few months in driving shoes as replacements, but they represented austerity rather than Prosperity, and I never once wasn’t a pauper in them. Finally, last week, I had an intuition that my slippers might have finally managed to wend their way back into availability, and they had! They arrived surprisingly, three days early, catching me on another emotionally low day common to these times of terminally wounded slippers and waning Prosperity. They might as well have been a shipment of gold bullion from Fort Knox. My Prosperity, ragged and clearly no longer the envy of anybody, instantly felt renewed. I’ve been strutting around like Rockefeller himself since they arrived. I must be careful, lest my freshly recovered Prosperity go too far to my head. May I not forget so easily this time, the cost of my malign indifference. May I appreciate my Prosperity every day, every time I slip into my Prosperity and shuffle across the living room. Prosperity returns on the littlest cat’s feet, too, leaving familiar footprints.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz