You must decide how to answer this request. You could just say no, and then you would have to decide how to handle your feelings (perhaps of guilt, selfishness, or callousness) and their effect on the relationship with your friend. Or you could say yes, and then you would have to decide how to foot the bill. Is it a gift? Is it a loan? Is it a loan that turns into a gift after a certain period of time? After how long? What will be best for your friendship? Is the relationship the most important element of your decision?

The challenge is to handle many complicated decisions well-very complex choices that nothing in this society has prepared us for. Otherwise you will end up psychologically running, hiding, or feeling isolated.

Furthermore, far from buying happiness and contentment, money tends to exacerbate rather than end "the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to," in Shakespeare's immortal words, particularly in our society where money is often a steadfast end rather than a necessary means and, for many, even a religion.

"To the extent that the delight in money becomes a transcendent faith," points out Lewis H. Lapham in his outspoken, irreverent book, Money and Class in America, "the converts to 'the world's leading religion' imagine that money stands as surrogate for all the other denominations of human currency-for love, work, art, play, and thought. Believing that they can buy the future and make time stand still, the faithful fall victim to a nameless and stupefying dread."

This book's focus, therefore, is not on the illusory delights that money can buy but on the hard work and tough decisions required to live life fully as a wealthy person. Furthermore, it is about the excitement and fulfillment reaped by those who meet the challenges well.

Stephen, forty-five, would never be a psychotherapy client, mostly because it's unlikely he would concede his need for this kind of help. He epitomizes a large group of outwardly successful people, primarily men, many of whom constitute the "new" wealth

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