“Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future.”

Depending on your situation the phrase is either haunting or hopeful. I’d heard it a few years ago and to be honest, I hated it at first – seemed like something said by well-meaning but over-protective moms just before reciting some other recycled maxim. But as I get older, and as the rivers of potential and ambition are now converging, it’s become apparent, and exactly true.

Your friends aren’t just your future, they’re your present. I realize we’re all born and molded into our own tangled messes of idiosyncrasies, habits and gifts. And each of us – in varying degrees – are absolutely our own person, responsible for our own machines. But, we are communal beings, born with a need for community and the inability to truly function without it.

I see this in the lives of almost everyone I know, and getting older is a great way to find more respect for your parents (and sometimes their sleepy cliches)

But the truth is, we become the people we’re surrounded by. Most of us would like to think ourselves more maverick and independent and “above the influence” and maybe we are, but not totally.

I’m beyond blessed to have amazing people in my life who have remained my friends through cross-country moves, family divorces, and more than many occasions of my being a total ingrate. It’s true that decades of friendship seals bonds in ways that not even the greatest commonality can, but just as proximity isn’t enough, neither is time.

If youre balking at my wiping a broad swath, justifying the maintenance of unhealthy friendships, please stop to consider the foundations of your friendship.

So examine your friendships as if you were cleaning a mirror to a spotless perfection. Be with those stronger than you are. Re-engage a challenging relationship, destroy the harmful ones.