On: Surroundings

“Watch who you hang with”. My grandmother used to say that. Not as a warning, exactly. More like a fact of life she’d observed so many times it stopped needing explanation. I didn’t fully understand it when I was younger. I do now.

Yesterday, I had the privilege of attending an award ceremony celebrating members of my senior class who were recognized as distinguished in service and scholarship. We sat together, waited for names to be called, and at one point the Men’s Glee Club led us in “Old Miami.” Something about singing your alma mater in a room full of people you’ve grown alongside hits differently when you know it’s one of the last times.

But what struck me most wasn’t the awards. It was the room itself.

Almost everyone receiving recognition that afternoon had a personal relationship with someone else who was also being called up. It felt less like a formal ceremony and more like a reunion, a gathering of people who had, over four years, quietly found each other. People who understood the value of showing up. People who, when they heard a call to serve, didn’t pause to weigh the inconvenience. They just went.

I sat there looking around and felt something I can only describe as gratitude. Not just for the friendships, but for what those friendships had required of me.

Here’s what I’ve come to believe: the people you surround yourself with are not just companions. They are a standard. Whether you realize it or not, the people closest to you set the bar for what feels normal. If the people around you are complacent, complacency starts to feel comfortable. If they’re restless in the best way, always asking what more can be done, always looking for the gap to fill, that restlessness becomes your baseline too.

The people in that room yesterday are the kind who look at their community and ask what can we do to make this better? Not because someone told them to. Not because there was a grade attached. But because they genuinely believe that someone has to, and they’d rather it be them.

Some people might call that overachieving. I call it a choice.

And it is a choice, one that gets made quietly, repeatedly, often without applause. It’s the choice to put down the controller, get off the couch, and do something that matters beyond your own comfort. That’s not a judgment on anyone’s downtime. Rest is real and rest is necessary. But there is a difference between rest and retreat. Between recharging and simply disappearing into distraction because the world outside your door asks something of you.

The world does ask something of you. It always has.

This week is National Volunteer Week. And I’d be willing to bet that many of the people in that ceremony hall yesterday will spend some part of this week in the community, looking for somewhere to show up, finding a way to be useful. Not because of the week on the calendar. Because that’s just who they are.

I want to be honest about something: I didn’t always understand why intentional community-building mattered. Early in college, I thought the people you ended up around were mostly circumstantial: your roommate, your classmates, whoever sat near you at orientation. But over time I’ve seen how much agency we actually have in this. You can drift into your circle, or you can build it with intention. You can stay in the rooms that are easy and comfortable, or you can find your way into rooms where people are doing something, building something, trying to leave a place better than they found it.

The latter changes you. Not overnight, but steadily. You start measuring yourself differently. You start asking different questions. You get around people who serve and suddenly service stops feeling extraordinary. It just starts feeling like what you do.

So here’s what I want to leave you with, and I mean this genuinely:

Look around at the people closest to you. Not to judge them, but to ask yourself honestly what standard they set for your life. Are they calling you upward? Are you calling them upward? Is there a shared sense that there’s work to be done and you’re all here to do it?

And if you’ve been on the sidelines, if you’ve been meaning to get involved, to volunteer, to show up somewhere and offer what you have, this is a good week to start. Not because it’s a designated week on the calendar, but because there is genuinely no better time than right now to decide what kind of person you want to be and who you want to be surrounded by.

You are who you hang around. Choose accordingly.

Talk soon,

Tyreke