Find Yourself Some Good People To Hang Out With

The company you keep.

That right there is a statement that used to baffle me when I was younger because the first time I heard it I thought it was an implication that I was choosing to hang around bad people.

In my childhood I did not choose to hang around specific people. I made no choosing at all. I just hung around with the other kids in the neighborhood, or kids that I met at school.

It wasn't until I was well into my twenties that the reality of choosing with whom you spent your time began to dawn on me.

Over the past few decades it's become glaringly apparent that one of two things has happened as I've aged.

I've either become very good at weeding out unsavory (or a least not-so-savory) characters and developing strong relationships with some wonderful people, or I've gotten extremely lucky.

It's most likely the luck thing.

I can live with that.