In the Book of Proverbs, King Solomon cautions, “Do not forsake your own friend or your father’s friend.”

The maxim brings to mind a conversation I once had with a friend. (I belong to a group of friends who have collaborated on many NGO projects in the last 10 years. Some of those people are more financially stable than others.) On this fateful day, my friend was moaning about how he’d been cheated in many business deals over the years. I asked who he had done business with and none of the names sounded familiar. Confused, I asked why he had never worked with our mutual friends on those deals. He sounded dismissive like he had grown beyond them and they were no longer at his level in life.

I reminded my friend that those people were the ones who had his back on numerous projects over the years. They raised money from scarce resources when it was needed. They neither sought fame nor fortune, but stood up for the right thing. Now that he had made money, suddenly those efficient and reliable friends were no longer worthy of consultation or collaboration.

I left him with this saying, “When life brings good people your way and you despise them, there will be no one left to deal with but evil people.”