Having younger friends provides a helpful counterweight to aging. While I don’t always understand their thinking, I like having people I can call on to explain things like why you would pay for pants that are already ripped. (I still don’t understand, but I am open to grasping it.)

As you get older, the need for younger people in your life is especially important if you don’t have kids—kids and their friends are excellent resources. Younger friends keep me tapped into what is happening even though it still may not make sense to me.

Be sure to cultivate older friends, too. We need them in our lives so that we can feel young. My husband and I used to go out for breakfast with the ROMEOS (“Retired Old Men Eating Out,” honoring a group my father dined with), who were in their eighties and nineties.

We loved their stories, as well as their wisdom and irreverence, and they liked that we knew how to search the Internet.

Yes, the contemporary circle of life.