Who To Look Up Too?

I got this friend named Santana who i basically grew up with as a young buck coming up. He sat me down and told me about his testimony and his childhold. It's been a while since we just kicked it as good friends and talked but i was back in town and we had a little time to reflect, discuss, and walk back down memory lanes. He told his past and i told him mines. My testimony was a little like his's but he was way much deeper. He told me that his father wasn't always there for him and that his parents divorced when he was like eight years old. Santana's father moved to Chicago and it was just young Santana his mother. He obeyed his mother very much but he didn't have that father figure to look up to that could teach him certain aspects from life a father could that a woman couldn't. So he told me that he use to hang around his older cousins alot because they were his father figures in his life since his father wasn't there. They turned him from a young kid to a man at a young age. He explained to hang with them he would have to do some things that young boys his age wouldn't do. Santana not having no father to look up to, he made a quick decision to be down with his big older cousins. Santana told me that half of his cousins were gang members, use to pick fights, run away from the law, hang with girls all night, and shot ball. The lifestyle was too fast for him to handle, so Santana's cousins gave him a choice rather to be with them or do his own thing? And Santana chose to run with his family. He learned alot from them and he gladly acknowledge how they were there for him when his daddy wasn't. Santana was very emotional when we discussed this.