Tell Me Who Your Friends Are

My dad had many little quips he would use not only to make a point but also to irritate us.

When I was growing up, hearing them made me angry. He would just pop them off without explaining them. That was maddening. They sounded like a snub. It wasn’t until I was an adult and later had our son that I caught myself using a couple of them, and I finally understood their meaning. I said I would never be like my dad, and yet here I was using those presumed words of wisdom.

I didn’t adopt all of his snide quotes. I don’t agree with them. Often, they come off as jabs rather than wisdom. Sometimes they are just jabs with no wisdom. I filed those away and locked them up, never to see the light of day again.

One of the most poignant phrases he liked to use was, “Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are.” God, how I hated it when he would spit that out. He used it primarily to piss me off. He would throw it out whenever situations involved our friends. Specifically, it would be bandied about when we wanted to do something with one of them and he didn’t particularly like the friend or their behavior. When he didn’t like them, he deemed them guilty of his judgment. But here is the thing. There is some wisdom in the statement. Its meaning eluded me for a long time, maybe because I didn’t like my dad’s character. I balked at a lot of his comments.

This one, though, had some depth. It meant that the people we associate with tend to be those we behave similarly to. We model our peers and close friends. Like goes to like. Whether it is out of envy or out of a need to be accepted, we do as our friends do. We act as they act.

This is problematic if a child begins to gravitate toward kids who exhibit bad behavior. When in Rome, do as the Romans do is a very real ideal. That quip was not his, but everyone understands it.

I began to understand what Dad meant by the friend quote in my twenties, and I found myself involved with some very sketchy people I called friends. They were not really friends, mind you. They were people I hung around with, and they hung around with me in a symbiotic relationship. I needed something, and they provided it, and vice versa. Most of the time, that was the feeling of being part of a group. It is human nature. We are social creatures who need other people.

Anyway, I got into a lot of trouble with these so-called friends, and my life spiraled into a mess I never wanted to be in. It took a long time to get out of those messes and to finally get away from those relationships. Then I got it. I got the meaning of the phrase.

When I had bad influences as friends, I too became a bad influence. The mind has an uncanny way of justifying a person’s actions. It needs to feel okay about those actions, so it jumps through hoops, blurs lines, and makes up whatever it needs to in order to accept things it knows are wrong.

The cycle it creates, if left uncorrected, often leads down an undesirable path that can be very destructive. This is one reason addicts are told to cut all ties to their friends who are also addicts. You cannot escape a bad lifestyle if you remain immersed in the same culture. All associations must be severed to even have a chance of success in becoming clean. It’s a pretty simple concept, actually. The act of doing it is not always simple.

We have an identity we have nurtured within the circles we run in. We became one of them and have a sense of the inclusivity we all hunger for. And so, when we refuse to let go and trust that you will find a new group to call friends, we don’t trust it. We don’t know what to do in the meantime, and we know the in-between will be hard and lonely. Humans don’t like being lonely.

When I heard myself say to my son, “Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are,” I approached it differently than my father had. I didn’t use it as a form of control over my son’s friends or over kids I disliked for him. I used it to help him discern who he wanted to be.

I began saying the words when my son was in kindergarten. I did not just spit them out, as Dad had. I explained what the saying meant each time I used it. In that form, the saying worked and was understood.

Our son thought carefully about who he kept as friends. He watched his acquaintances’ actions and behavior. Once he knew their actions aligned with his core beliefs and mindset, he nurtured those relationships into friendships. He has had the same group of friends since kindergarten. Many kids have come and gone in our son’s life, but only a select few have remained close. These kids, well, adults now, are fine human beings. Mother approved, to be sure.

I sometimes hear our son say those sage words. I have heard them when he is counseling a friend or someone he interacts with, and it makes me proud that he understands the meaning and puts it into practice.

Don’t misunderstand me. However, he made mistakes in his discernment every now and then. Sometimes it was because he chose a friend unwisely, and sometimes because the friend himself began associating with others, which led them down a path my son chose not to take. Those are all lessons learned.

Today, he has great, like-minded friends who are as industrious and goal-oriented as he is. That’s a great thing. They prop each other up and encourage one another. They all work hard and have great heads on their shoulders. Most importantly, they stay out of trouble and enjoy quality, sound results from leading honorable lives. He is happy and adulting nicely. I can’t think of anything a parent wants more for their kids than that.

Dad said and did a lot of things I would never say or do, but this saying was spot on. It taught me a lot, and it taught my son. He will carry that wisdom down his path with his own family one day. That is a good thing.

Drop me a comment with some wisdom you taught your child as they grew up that you never thought you would. I’d love to hear how others made sense of what our parents taught us. How and when did we get it? When did we understand the meaning of something a parent told us, and what did that feel like?

(Published on Medium by Pen With Paper, May 2026)

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