Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.

Friendship comes with obligations, and treating it as a resource to draw on quietly empties it. The difference shows in small moments: whether you make contact only when you need something, whether you keep score, whether the other person’s inconvenient news is welcome. The obligation is not a burden but the thing that makes the bond worth anything.

Run through the people you count as friends and ask who has heard from you recently for no reason at all. Get in touch with one of them this week with no ask attached. That is most of the maintenance there is.