Purchases can produce happiness, but only to a point, and rarely in the way expected. What people are usually craving is not the object but the feeling they associate with it — connection, ease, recognition, rest. A luxury holiday promises all of these, but once it arrives, the brain adapts quickly. Within days it becomes the new normal, and the baseline reasserts itself. Here’s what I ask myself: if the feeling is what you actually want, it is worth asking whether you already have access to it through means that cost nothing.