You Set Your Own Value
We were walking through a luxury shopping center.
Marble floors. Quiet music.
The kind of place where people speak softly so their money can make the noise for them.
My daughter looked around at the shops, Louis Vuitton, Prada, all those temples of self-worth, and said,
“We don’t belong here.”
She shrugged, almost apologetically. “We’re not dressed properly. We don’t have that kind of money.”
I told her, “Come on. You set your own value.”
That is the trick the world plays. It dresses up emptiness and sells it as belonging.
It teaches children to measure their worth by the price tags they cannot reach.
It makes people forget that dignity does not come from velvet ropes or gold lettering,
but from the quiet way you walk through a place that was not built for you and still keep your head level.
I wanted my daughter to know that no one grants permission to exist.
Not a brand. Not a gate. Not a price tag.
No one can give you belonging. It is something you decide.