Why this exists

Think of the first door that opened for you. A phone call, not yours: your father's, to someone he knew from college. You still sat the interview. You still did the work.

That call worked because two people stayed friends for thirty years, through transfers, weddings, one bad business, and the long stretches when one of them still picked up the phone. It is why a man gives his old friend's daughter the ground floor of his building on a handshake. He knows who she comes from.

Now your own: the college friends, the first-job friends, the ones from the shared flat, the old boss. Nobody fell out. It just went quiet. Three years of quiet, and a close friend is someone you used to know.

A door nobody keeps open is shut when your children reach it.

Nobody falls out. People just drift off. Life gets busy, and the thought to call never comes when you have the time to act on it.

So this is the smallest fix for drifting off: a short list, how long it has been, and one name a day to call. Not everyone. Just the people you do not want to lose.