Self-Development and Friendships: The Mirror and the Company We Keep

One of the ways to get feedback for our self-development is through good friends. A friend can be a mirror that shows us our defects or blemishes so we can work on them. The Prophet (SAW) said, "The believer is the mirror of his brother" (Sunan Abi Dawud 4918). We need people around us to make us realize more about ourselves than we might otherwise discover. A person is said to be a "social animal" and thus cannot survive by themselves.

If our friends shape who we become, how carefully are we choosing them?

The Circles of People in Our Lives

We meet all types of people throughout our journey of life. Our closest are our immediate family members: our parents, grandparents, siblings, and the extended family. They know us best. Then come family friends, childhood friends, classmates, colleagues, and so on. A person should have good relations with all of them. Allah tells us that He made us into peoples and tribes so that we may know one another (Qur'an 49:13).

Kindness Toward All Acquaintances

Acquaintances can be anyone one meets in the journey of life: neighbors, travel companions, people we do business with, and so on. All such people have basic rights to our kindness and good treatment. The Prophet (SAW) said that Jibril (AS) kept advising him about the neighbor until he thought the neighbor would be made an heir (Sahih al-Bukhari 6014; Sahih Muslim 2624). Allah also instructs us to speak good words to people (Qur'an 2:83).

Choosing Our Closest Friends Carefully

Nevertheless, we should be very careful about whom we treat as our closest friends, especially those who are our protecting friends (Awliya), who guard our interests. They have a lot of influence on our development. Such close friends should be selected with a lot of care and consideration, because a person is on the way of life of their protecting friends. The Prophet (SAW) said, "A person is upon the way of his close friend, so let each of you look at whom he befriends" (Sunan Abi Dawud 4833; Jami' at-Tirmidhi 2378).

He (SAW) also compared a good companion to a seller of musk, and a bad one to a blacksmith. With the musk seller, we either receive a gift, buy some, or at least enjoy the fragrance, while the blacksmith may burn our clothes or leave us with a bad smell (Sahih al-Bukhari 2101; Sahih Muslim 2628).

In making the choice of close friends, we need to ensure that the friends will not take us away from our God-inspired goals, but will help us reach them and reinforce our own paradigm of reality. Allah reminds us that on the Day of Judgment, close friends will be enemies to one another, except for the righteous (Qur'an 43:67).

Friendship is thus a very important element of self-development, and we should be very careful in practicing it.