A commonly used American idiom to express or forewarn the benefits (or lack there of) by one person to another about the company that one chooses to keep. Yet as much as we've heard Grandma, Mama, Uncle-This One, or Auntie-That One, say this, we somehow forget to apply it in our everyday lives.
Keeping good company is not a modern concept by any means, it's been a basis of life for people since the beginning of time. Regardless of caste, class, nobility or socio-economic placement within society, the good folks have always tended to wield a lasting degree of power. The bad folks? Well they've come into power yes, but their losses always seem to far outweigh their gains, and Ha! you guessed it, those same good folks are always right there to pick up the pieces and restore order at the fall of the bad folk regime. The good folks over at Disney, you know the ones that keep making good money from all those good movies, good programs, good networks, good plays, good theme parks, High School Musicals (and accompanying multi-platinum selling soundtracks and tours, wow) that you hate-to-admit-you-love, toyed with the whole "hang with nine" idea about 15 years ago (among countless other times, this just illustrates it best) with the whole "Circle of Life" concept... well, sort of. See the good animals hung out with other good animals regardless of creed, and the bad animals - all cast aways and even close relatives of the good animals - cliqued up together and collectively "hated-on" the good animals, and... Well, you've seen the movie, it made in excess of a billion dollars (try that scarface... good/bad, making sense?) so everyone's seen it. But the point is this, not only will you be judged and measured by society at large due to the company you keep, but those are the standards by which you'll judge yourself. Good happy animals (and people for that matter) really don't have much time for their angry, jealous, hateful bad opposites - no matter how much they love them. It's just not worth them risking the personal investment they've made in themselves. So, f your third cousin twice-removed, brought 12 men on a day time t.v. show to determine who fathered her child, only after her 2 other friends did it before her, guess who's next in line!
So does this mean to rush out and find a bunch of financially rich, ivy leaguers to buddy up with and throw up two fingers (peace) to your cousin & co.? Lol, it wouldn't hurt! But how many of us actually have 9 of The World's Next Top Leaders waiting around in the wings for us to get our acts together? Show of hands? Yeah, didn't think so. So the next best thing is involving, surrounding and immersing ourselves in the throes of the good folks around us. We should invest in our personal interest instead of the common interest that our projected upon us, and join the circles of the best and the brightest on your level in that field. I say "level" because you're obviously not going to be invited over to Bill Gates' house after your first day of a computer science course , but you can choose to hang with the kids that were most attentive in that class instead of the ones who slept through it. Hey, the precedent has been set, so there's nothing to hold you back or have you believe that you and your crew can't be the next Bill Gates, Paul Allen and the rest of the crew that founded Microsoft. And if you think that success can't be repeated, send an email to the guys that own this whole Blogger/Blogspot thing, I think they call their company Google. Think about that next time you're lucky number 10.
Peace
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