At a gathering recently, I ran into someone I hadn’t seen in years.
For a long time, I had been spellbound from afar. Their social media presence radiated beauty, elegance and an enticing lifestyle. It was glamourous.
The bubble burst after two minutes.
Within moments of our conversation, they happily recounted the misfortune of a mutual acquaintance. When I declined to join in, they seemed irritated. Later, so I was told, I had become the subject of a similar conversation myself.
Their online personality had disappeared. What remained felt strangely impoverished.
Curious, I looked up the origin of the word glamour. The Cambridge Dictionary defines glamour as: “the special, exciting and attractive quality of a person, place, or activity”. So far so good. When traced back to its etymological origin, however, glamour aptly explains the sudden disappointment. It derives from a Scots word meaning a magic spell or enchantment, specifically one that alters appearances, making something look more beautiful or desirable than it really is, or casting an illusion over someone’s eyes.
We live in an economy of glamour. An environment that rewards appearances, presentation, titles and performance. Advertising trades in this currency, and social media intensely accelerated the phenomenon. We polish the surface, whilst quietly neglecting the soil beneath it. Wealth is one of the most potent expressions of this external language of value. It is associated with possibility, security, desirability and success. Whereas abundance suggests a state of being, wealth is a state of having. Yet, wealth is more than possession. It expands a person’s sphere of influence, and its power is never without consequence. It has the capacity to cultivate life or to deepen desolation.
Tending the Inner Garden
When I look out of my bedroom window, I see two gardens. I moved into this house in winter, when both gardens were bare. One appeared quietly ordered in its nakedness. The other was equally bare but had a different feel. I could make out a skeletal Ginkgo tree, unsure whether it was alive—ivy climbing its structure, creating the appearance of life.
When spring arrived, one garden erupted. Peonies, roses, wildflowers, calla lilies and herbs flourished in succession. Each week brought a new colour, a new surprise, the garden revealing what had been beneath the bare winter surface all along. The second garden exposed something else. The Ginkgo tree was dead. The ground became increasingly overtaken by weeds, tangled and intertwined, each plant fighting for space, all of them struggling until, in the heat of summer, they collapsed into a dry mass of brown.
Both gardens received the same rain. Both were warmed by the same sun. The difference was care. One now abundant, the other simply growing.
For weeks I had seen my neighbour prune, rake and feed the plot of land that was now flourishing. She was not working alone. Above ground, she formed part of a network of bees, butterflies and birds; below the earth, worms and mycelial webs turned the ground, all in kinship.
The distinction between wealth and abundance becomes clearer here. Wealth can be accumulated, measured and exchanged. Abundance cannot be reduced to quantity. It describes our inner stance toward what we have: our capacity to create, nourish, give and participate in life. It appears as if life itself leans towards abundance. Stand beneath a mulberry tree in the fruiting season and it’s hard to believe that nature operates from scarcity.
If we become addicted to the external, our interiority will haunt us.
This is the crux behind our fascination with glamour and the superficialities of life. We’ve become highly skilled at cultivating what can be seen while neglecting what is within. We tend the image, the body, the home, the career, the object and the bank account. Yet the inner, subjective experience remains unattended, until the bolt from the blue arrives.
Inner capital is self-knowledge, grown slowly and embodied. Unlike financial capital, it cannot be inherited, transferred or extracted. It is cultivated by tending its soil, through friction, discipline, love, loss and the willingness to expand our comfort zones.
When someone I loved was dying, I realised how years of yoga had prepared me for this unique experience. Time and again, I had practised breathing through discomfort and staying present, rather than being carried away by my thoughts and emotions. In the hospital room, that practice allowed me to meet death with openness rather than an overwhelming fear of loss. The quiet strength of inner capital.
The Relational Field
Developmentally we are wired for connection. Our survival, flourishing and even sense of self emerges through connection with others. This is precisely why inner capital carries such profound value. It cultivates the very capacities that allow one person to truly encounter and love another. Inner capital is rarely glamourous—it does not instantly lead to status, visibility or financial gain. In a culture built around glamour and bottom lines, the refined work of becoming can almost be invisible.
And yet, it’s not.
We are drawn to people who have tended their inner landscape. Not because they appear perfect, but because being around them feels genuinely good. Their presence creates space rather than demand. It nourishes rather than consumes. We walk away from such encounters feeling elevated instead of depleted. The returns of investment on inner capital are trust, depth and relationships that make us feel seen and loved as opposed to used. Inner capital is the currency directly linked to our biological programming; it “buys” us intimate connection and belonging.
Counter to what many might believe, no amount of external security can compensate for internal insecurity. We catch glimpses of this in the megalomaniacal behaviour of some of those who wield immense power, or in the high achiever who sits in plant medicine ceremony each month searching without integrating, despite having achieved everything the outside world could offer. The internal wound drives the need for validation, in some cases literally, ad astra. The external won’t heal an inner sense of worthlessness, the heartbreak of losing someone we love, betrayal, divorce, illness, ageing or mortality itself. Life inevitably throws punches, and they reveal what has been cultivated within.
What happens when culture collectively avoids the inner work?
The system around us reflects what we prioritise. An economy primarily built around extraction, transaction and artificial scarcity keeps reinforcing the same patterns within. We measure our worth, compete for status and treat what is alive as something to use. This doesn’t just deplete the earth; it depletes us by creating distance from the very exchanges that nourish and regenerate us.
I-Thou
Gossip is a small example of this economy. People reach for third-party conversations to elevate themselves. Yet, the need to diminish another reveals an insecurity within ourselves. A wholesome person does not need another to be less.
The philosopher Martin Buber described two ways of relating to the world. An I-Thou relationship is a deep, mutual and holistic connection in which two beings encounter each other as whole, authentic and equal individuals. In an I-It relationship, we relate to others as objects, something to use or evaluate.
Gossip is I-It relating. It turns a person into a story. Taken to its extreme, this way of seeing others as objects rather than full human beings makes slavery, genocide and sexual exploitation possible. To recognise the humanity behind the person who gossips, rather than shrinking them to their behaviour, is a movement towards I-Thou.
I notice the temptation in myself, even here: writing about the encounter at the gathering, it would be easy to reduce my glamourous acquaintance to a cautionary tale, to make them the It of this article. The urge to devalue someone who has hurt, disappointed or angered us is close. Every time we notice it and choose not to follow, we build inner capital. This does not excuse harm, nor does it require us to expose ourselves to the doer of harm; rather, it refuses to forget the person beneath the action.
Money as a form of capital is not separate from the consciousness that directs it. When money flows from an I-Thou place, it becomes generative. A friend who quietly covers another’s tuition, without expectation. Land bought and returned to the people it was taken from, no strings attached. Anonymous generosity. This is wealth that creates beauty, connection and shared abundance. A home becomes a place of belonging rather than a symbol of status. When it flows from an I-It place, however, it becomes extractive. Luxury is a way of proving worth rather than an expression of appreciation and craftsmanship.
Returning to the gardens: money is like the spring rain arriving after winter. The rain does not create the garden; it reveals the condition of the soil. Similarly, wealth often reveals the inner landscape of the person who holds it. Where the soil is depleted, more water cannot restore what has been neglected—seeds lack nourishment, wither and struggle to grow, just as human offspring deprived of loving attention wither and struggle to thrive. The ground must be tended, nourished and brought back into relationship with life.
Where the soil has been cared for, the same rain will reveal abundant beauty, expansion, joy and aliveness. Self-knowledge and self-care are not separate, egotistical, navel-gazing pursuits, but ecological acts, deeds that sustain the relational field with fellow beings, including our precious Earth.
Inner capital is love, compounding.
Words by Mia Ganda
Mia is a coach, writer, and facilitator currently completing a Master’s in Existential Psychotherapy in London. She also holds a Master’s in International Relations.
Born in Germany, she began her career in the international fashion industry across Europe and the United States before moving to London, where she spent eight years in sports management and private banking. Over time, her focus shifted from external negotiations to the inner landscapes of human growth and potential.
