If there's one thing I had to tell the coming generation, it is that they have to choose their friends wisely and I say that all from personal experiences. I remember back when I was a little kid, my dad would always mock me (not exactly in a bad way) because I was the oldest one amongst my friends.
I remember one time at the village, while he was seated in the living room with his siblings and for some reason I was the topic being discussed and he had told his siblings about my friends and how I wasn't ashamed to be moving around with kids way younger than I was.
What my old man didn't know then was that I had tried moving with kids my age and even with those older than I was and the things I heard those kids say or see them do were crazy things that I knew would get me in trouble with not just my parents but with everyone around and that made me withdraw myself from them.
And just as I had imagined, it didn't take long for some of these guys to be caught doing stupid and crazy things like stealing, womanising and the rest. And what's funny is that I would occasionally hear my old man talking about how his kids would never do those things, not knowing that he almost had pushed me into rolling with those kids who were now seen as bad kids.
Sadly, some of the kids who were caught stealing back then were once good kids, people I once werr friends with, but because they wanted to feel among, they had to go do those stupid things and got caught.. This is why it is very important to choose your friends wisely, because the people you hang around with will always play a huge role in your life.
Another time where choosing the right people as friends had helped me in my life was when I gained admission into the university. I was in a new world, a world where I had all the freedom to myself for the first time in my life and I knew that hanging out with the wrong clique could cause some life-long damage to not just my education, but to my life if I wasn't careful.
So I had taken the first few weeks there to observe and luckily for me, I found and made friends with two guys whose visions were even more focused that mine was. These guys knew why they were in school and they were more than ready to face the challenges the school had to offer, as long as it meant them getting to their goal.
The three of us became friends and although it was somewhat of a boring trio because we rarely did stuff the other guys were doing, like parties and all that, we still were happy and always enjoyed each other's company.
And today, while everyone else is trying so hard to survive out there, the three of us are doing so well for ourselves. We recently went out to drink some nice hot bowl of pepper soup and there we had sat and reminisced about old times and how we had met.
Looking back at it all, I thank my stars that I had met this lads when I did and I'm grateful for the different ways they've all impacted in my life.
