I would just like to point out, right at the start, that this piece is not about any particular time, place or person.

It's a far wider scope than that.
It's a broad and general theme, and I think it can apply to almost anyone, simply because most of us end up learning a number of hard and often hurtful life lessons over the years. One of the ugliest of these, is when we're often disastrously wrong about who our actual friends are (at least in the strictest definition of the word). Sometimes such lessons can be quite costly indeed, and in more ways than one.

I also have to wonder, especially since the rise of (Anti)-Social Media, just how many of us still truly and deeply understand just what an actual "friend" is, as opposed to what the definition has been gradually twisted & misted, polluted & diluted to by constant exposure to online Junk-Culture?

Many of us don't understand until well into adulthood that the number of actual friends we're ever going to make (and more importantly retain) throughout our lives is not a very large number. Indeed, I've read a few articles over the years that say that, for most people, the number of true, lifelong friends one can expect to have tends to be countable on a single hand. The only appreciable difference between introverts and extroverts is that the extrovert may need one or two more fingers for their tally than the introvert.

I could say a lot more than this, but I think that I'm getting close to muddying the waters, as it is.

Before I close this off, however, I should probably also mention that one of the biggest outside references for this piece was the 1985 hit song: "A Good Heart" by Irish singer Feargal Sharkey. Sharkey was, at least in North America, unfortunately pretty much a one-hit wonder. "Good Heart" was the last I can remember hearing of him.