A true friend is the most precious of all possessions and the one we take the least thought about acquiring.

Friendship is the one important thing most people leave entirely to chance. Careers get planned, houses get researched, and the people who will carry you through the worst decade of your life are whoever happened to sit nearby in your twenties. That is not a criticism of luck, since some of the best ones arrive that way. It is a note about the strange absence of deliberateness around something this valuable.

Choose one person you would like to know better and do something about it this month. Suggest the walk, make the call, ask the second question. Friendship at this stage of life is mostly a matter of who bothers.