Breaks during your first year of college are always a great time. You come home and get together with old friends, talk about your college stories and maybe drink together for the first time. At this point in your life, you think, “Wow, we were right. We are going to be friends forever.”

And then you start coming home for more breaks, and you begin seeing fewer and fewer people. What happened to friends forever? What happened to keeping in touch?

That old myth about growing apart from old high school friends is true. Unless you have the luxury of attending the same college as your friends, then it’s more than likely that activities, new friends, new surroundings and a new you will begin to push you apart from the people you thought you’d never lose. Even if you do go to the same college, you still might find yourself going in separate directions.

This is fine. This is life, after all. We can’t expect to still connect with the same people we had eighth-grade algebra with. College changes us, whether we like it or not. Slowly, but surely, we’re turning into different people.

But I do notice something whenever I get together with some old high school friends. For the most part, it’s not awkward or anything like that. We actually have a pretty good time. I usually end up leaving wherever the hanging out took place thinking, “Wow, I miss so-and-so.” But then after it happens, we don’t talk again for more than a year.

Yeah, we change, and yeah, we move on, but I think a big factor in losing touch with friends just boils down to laziness. To really keep in touch with someone, you have to make it work. We’re so engrossed in our own change that it results in this laziness.

And it’s weird, because you’d think with how much social media is prevalent in our lives, that keeping in touch would be easier. But maybe it’s actually made it worse. It’s as if we think visiting someone’s Facebook profile is the equivalent of calling them up and asking how their life is, or a wall post is the same as taking someone to lunch.

As I was looking back on my life at the beginning of the year, it was surprising to me how many friendships fell to the wayside in 2010. Sure, there were some distance and business factors, but it was mainly due to my own laziness. I didn’t even keep in touch with people who were always there for me. Anymore, breaks are more a time for me to hang out on my parents’ couch all week in my pajamas than they are an opportunity to hang out with people.

I know I’m not the only one out there going through this. Let’s close our laptops, pick up our phones and call those people who used to matter so much to us. Maybe you two will be completely different people, and that’s fine, but maybe you’ll connect again and remember the good times.

There’s a quote from the movie, “Almost Famous,” that says, “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.”

In high school, all of us were uncool. But those people that we were uncool with, that got us through the hell of high school — those people are important, because those people are responsible for how you turned out the way you did. And maybe that’s a bad thing, but it’s still important.

So, let’s work on our laziness. Friendship is rare these days, but even rarer is the friendship that has stood the test of time and change. Sometimes you won’t connect, but if you do — well, it’s just nice to have someone in your corner.