The friends you’ll reminisce with at sixty are being chosen right now, mostly by who you keep texting back.

Long friendships are not chosen in a single decision. They get sorted by thousands of small acts of maintenance, mostly replying, showing up, remembering something somebody mentioned once. The people still around in forty years are the ones whose thread you never let go quiet for too long.

Answer the message you have been leaving unanswered. The whole mechanism really is that simple and that boring, which is why so many friendships quietly end without anybody deciding.