As the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together, which means we can learn a lot about someone simply by studying who they hang around with. No doubt, some good people do spend significant time with some not-so-good people, for various reasons, sensible or not, who somehow are still able to maintain their good character traits, but we need to see this as the exception and not the rule, for truly, when we see somebody that we know well who is hanging around with people who legitimately have bad reputations, it’s difficult to believe that this hasn’t rubbed off onto them in a bad way, as well.
That said, because we are free will individuals, and thus have agency as to who we will or will not spend our time with, it signifies that the friends that we make or the people that solicit us to be their friends, are really at our volition as to what occurs or doesn’t occur, of which, those that make the wrong friends, have taken a turn onto a road that is best avoided, because the wrong friends, are going to have a strong tendency to lead us to all sorts of bad events, so that when good potential meets up with the wrong friends, this is in all probability going to lead to a life in which that good potential has been vacated for something that is unbecoming of what that good potential could have become.
As a parent or as a mentor, we should make it our point to want to know who appears to be friends with those that we are vested in, and when those friends are lacking in good character traits, it’s important to step in as a protective agent. No doubt, we don’t always read the situation right, which is why snap judgments are often not going to be the best judgments, indicating that we should observe, listen, learn, and interject as need be, so as to ascertain the character of those who would be friends with people that we have a responsibility to.
Still, at the end of the day, in life, each of us makes choices, for better or for worse, and so we can take well-meaning advice and do something constructive with it, or we can ignore such, because we know better, or perhaps because we don’t care to hear what we do not desire to hear. Nevertheless, it’s important to comprehend that we ultimately are the captains of our own fate, and those who pick wrong will surely regret that decision, sooner or later, because the wrong friends will take us down paths that we need not have ever entered, yet we did, and the price we pay will be our own to pay.
All of the above signifies that we ought to be mindful of the friends that we make and that we have, because the right friends have our best interests in mind and prove that to us when it matters most, and the wrong friends won’t have our back, because when the chips are down, they won’t even be there for us.