Are you a good friend? That seems like an easy enough question to answer. As we look ahead to the second half of our lives, friends will become as vitally important to us as they were when we were seniors in high school. Look at the older folks you know. Aren't those with friends more connected to the world, happier, and more content than those who have few or no friends at all? Maintaining friendships takes effort, consistency, and a willingness to give without necessarily getting anything in return. It is crucial for us to take the time to be a good friend.

Love and friendship are the lifeblood of our existence, yet many of us let our friendships take a backseat to family, career, and other time-sapping responsibilities. Now is the time to renew old friendships and forge new ones. Every day, new research reveals the healthful and sustaining power, both spiritually and physically, of friendship. We encourage you to learn how to reconnect to friendship and to appreciate its power.

What does it mean to be a friend? Here are some attributes that might help you begin to develop your own definition of friendship:

• Someone you've been with at key times in your life
• Someone you can talk to about anything
• Someone you can turn to for help and comfort
• Someone you can be yourself with
• Someone you share memories and private jokes with
• Someone you trust

Now, think about your performance as a friend. How do you rate as a friend? Without being hard on yourself, you may discover that you have been a little lax. Perhaps you have faded in and out of your friend's life. Perhaps you forgot to call her on her birthday. Perhaps you forgot to celebrate a certain milestone.

Do you ever feel competitive with some of your friends? Maybe a little envious of another friend's lifestyle or career? Acknowledge those feelings as human, then push them aside. In their place put loyalty, understanding, and love -- the bedrock feelings shared by true close friends.

We have talked about close friends. Now, let your gaze expand further to include other friends, those with whom you like to spend time and do things, but whom you may not count among your closest friends. Imagine you are skimming flat stones across a pond. The pond is life, the stone is you, the ripples are your relationships. The ripples are subsets of your full range of friends. The closest and smallest circle is made up of your intimates, your compadres, your closest friends. The next set of ripples includes people who are important but not quite as vital to you as your close friends, and so on. Let's call these people "ripple friends."