In a way, if you reclaim the time you spend with people who are not real friends, you would have a lot of free time.

Sometimes it takes an illness, a near-death experience or the loss of a job or a marriage to find out who our real friends are.

Just because we spend time with people does not mean that they are friend-worthy.

And social media has nothing to do with friends at all – you don’t count the number of friends, you count on them.

When families live in a neighborhood and their children play together, it is not unusual for those ties that bind to be loosened when one of the families up and moves elsewhere even in the same town.

The “friends” we accumulate at work by proximity are often sacrificed when our place of employment changes.  We make new friends with those close to us.

Even though I am Hoboken-born and Jersey bred, one of the lessons I have learned from the state of Arizona, home of rattlesnakes, is that snakes take on the camouflage of their surroundings making it harder for other predators and hikers to see them.

They become like their surroundings.

That’s why it is important to increase the time spent with people who are true friends – the kind that will last a lifetime (and even beyond in some cases) rather than hang out with those who may be friends by proximity.

Up the time with true friends and be 100% present in their lives.

Reduce the time with so-called friends who you could live without someday and it is a guarantee that you’ll never have to live without the people that really matter.

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