Dear Daughter,

When you start earning your first real money, something happens. The world suddenly feels available to you – new things, branded things, premium things. And that feeling of being able to afford them, of being a level above where you were – it’s real. I’m not going to pretend it isn’t.

Enjoy it. That’s what I want to say first. Your twenties and thirties will be full of that pleasure, and there’s nothing wrong with it. Buy the dress. Try the restaurant. Travel somewhere you couldn’t have before. These are the textures of a life being lived.

But here’s what I want you to know – and I’m telling you now so you don’t have to figure it out the hard way at 40.

Somewhere around that age, a quiet thing happens. A new car no longer excites the way it once did. A new bag gives you a few minutes of pleasure and then everything returns to exactly how it was before. Nothing material lands the same way anymore. People call it a midlife crisis. I think it’s actually your soul waking up and telling you the truth: that things were never the real source.

Happiness from things is real – but it has a ceiling. After a point, the ceiling doesn’t move, no matter how much you spend.

And here’s the trap nobody warns you about: there is no top to this ladder. If you want a branded bag today, tomorrow you’ll want a better one. Then one above that. The desire doesn’t get satisfied – it gets bigger. You keep climbing, and you keep feeling the same hollow feeling, just in more expensive clothes.

This is not me saying: don’t earn, don’t spend, don’t enjoy. I’m saying: don’t chase. Don’t make the acquisition the point. The person who saves for a year and then buys something she truly loves is doing something beautiful. The person who is always restless for the next thing, measuring herself against what others have – she will be tired for a very long time.

I’ve watched your Nani arrive at a kind of peace about this, and it moved me to see it – the understanding that enough is a feeling, not a number. That some indulgence is joy, and obsession is its shadow.

So here is the one rule I have learnt, and it came to me as clearly as anything I’ve ever believed:

Have a purse in which you can keep fifty thousand. Don’t have a purse that costs fifty thousand when there’s nothing inside it.

Build the inside first. The outside will mean something then.

And if you want to know what actually gives a full life – it’s purpose. Work that matters to someone beyond yourself. A problem you genuinely want to solve. The ability to help someone with the same money you might have spent on something you’ll forget in a week. That is the happiness that doesn’t have a ceiling. That kind doesn’t wear off.

You’ll find your way to it. I have no doubt. But I wanted to name it early, so when the world tries to sell you something – and it will, endlessly – you’ll already know where to look.

With all my love,

Maa