Always Greener

“That’s because Johnny’s a TFB,” Ted said to his new friend James. The two met the week before and became instant buddies.

“Huh? A what?” James seemed confused.

“A TFB—a trust fund baby. His grandfather invented some drill bit for offshore oil exploration that just about every company uses.” Ted paused. ”They made a killing.”

“Must be nice,” James smirked.

“Yeah—that’s where most people go—the old grass is greener syndrome.” Ted raised his eyebrows.

“What do you mean? If all my bills were paid…are you kidding? I’d be golden.”

The two friends bantered back and forth heatedly, a familiar albeit recent afternoon repartee. 

“Money never equals happiness,” Ted continued. ”There are a lot of miserable folk who pay their bills on time. The rich are among the worse.” 

“Yeah, well, if it were me, I’d put my whole life on auto-debit. Can you imagine?” James pumped his fist in the air. “Paid automatically, baby, without even firin’ up the computer. Talk about sweet…”

“Like I mentioned, easy to say. Think about Johnny.” Ted shook his head. “Did you hear what he said? He had to get a haircut, raise his GPA by a point and something else about dumping his girlfriend or he’d get cut off. That’s ridiculous.”

“You mean cut off by his trust? So what,” James snorted. “I’d get rid of my hair and the girl if I had one.”

“No you wouldn’t, and that’s the point. You’d tell your Dad to stick it in his ear and you’d mean it. Johnny won’t do that.”

Ted let his words sink in. James hesitated before answering.

“What are you saying? That he’s a wimp?”

“In essence, yes,” Ted nodded. “He has no backbone. Every time he ever has any major problem, someone else handles it. They don’t let him fail so he never learns. It’s sad.”

“I tell you what—he could have a lot worse problems than that. I wish I had his kind of problems.”

“No, you don’t,” Ted insisted. “You don’t want to know what it’s like to run to Mommy or Daddy for permission to do anything. You don’t want to live with the shame of knowing that someone else will always wash your dirty laundry. You don’t want to feel guilty about treating yourself differently than others even though you’ve been told all your life that you are different—especially when you had nothing to do with creating that difference in the first place. You don’t, James, and you’re lucky you don’t have to.”

“Relax, dude. No need to burst an artery. I just want to be famous at the bank. That’s all.” James winced at his friend. “Why are you so plugged in about this anyway?”

“Story of my life, bro’ and it took me a long time to get over it. I came from a long line of TFBs and you never saw such a sad bunch—afraid, hesitant, second-guessers, non-committal—about everything I loathe in a person. Sorry if that sounds harsh. The whole wealth perpetuation thing is so highly over-rated.” Ted stopped his litany.

“Wow! What a trip,” James mumbled. “You—a TFB.”

“Yeah—famous at the bank--`til the market crashed. Thank the heavens for that.” Ted smiled. “Barely made it out alive.”

“You’re so weird.” James furrowed his brow and confronted his friend. “Would you take it all back?” 

Ted looked straight into his eyes. “Not in a million years, bro’. Not unless I earned it.”

That’s A View From The Ridge…

Best-selling author, Ridgely Goldsborough has written 19 books to date, 5 on emotional intelligence and has developed a phenomenal program called CustomerConversionFormula.com that you can get absolutely free as a member of the Groove community.