With Friends Like That...

If you’re like me, you probably are easily influenced by your friends and those closest to you.  You may never admit it, but you probably have a story of a time that a friend lead you to make a pretty dumb decision.  Consider the following.

When I was in 7^th or 8^th grade I had a friend who lived up the street from a baseball field.  I literally mean “up” from the field, because he lived on a hill, and at the bottom was the field.  We would often go there to play, ride our bikes, or do whatever awkward 13-year-old’s used to do.  One day we had some seriously heavy rains, and the baseball field was flooded. It was pretty bad, and the water had to be 3 or 4 feet deep all over the small baseball field.  So my friend had an idea.

“Why don’t we go swimming on the baseball field?”  What a great idea!  We should go swim in dirty flood water!  Awesome! So away we went, a small group of us, and we had fun.  Well, we had fun until we remembered that there was a small chain link fence just below the surface of the dirty water.

Thankfully I was a slow swimmer, because the person who was reminded of the fence was the guy swimming ahead of us … and the top of the fence caught him and gave him a tremendous gash on his chest that bled like crazy. He cried, he screamed … he probably got infected … and we all thought it was awesome and called him a baby.  (We were 13.) 

Looking back that was incredibly stupid. You don’t swim in flood water.  I know this now.  I’m pretty sure I knew it then. So why did I do it? Well … why do you make most of the stupid decisions you make?   

Isn’t it true that your friends and those closest to you often have more influence over you than your own convictions? Isn’t it true that your greatest regrets and your biggest mistakes probably occurred in the company of your friends and not in the presence of your enemies? Who did you smoke your first cigarette with, a friend or an enemy? Who encouraged you to blow off class or skip studying to go to a movie? Exactly. And it doesn’t just happen in school; our close friends continue to help define who we are and what we are choosing to become.

Your friends will directly influence the direction and quality of your life.  So pick your friends wisely.  Think about who you allow close to you, and if you like who they are and what they are helping you to become.  Better yet, think about who you want to become, find people who would help you be that person, and spend time with them. 

And do it before the next big flood, trust me.