From early childhood, we are looking for our most prized friends. Friends have a great influence on us. You can’t change the people around you, but you can choose your friends wisely.

Are your friends helping you develop in any way, say they help you with a healthy lifestyle or have rich professional experience that you can learn from? Good friends can help you become a better person. In short, do you see meaningful growth by getting along with them?

Good friends whom you can trust will create a safe environment for you to share your deepest truths. They will likely let your secret remain a secret. They will hold you up in good esteem （尊重） in public. They will keep their words. Their actions will match their words. And if you goofed up, they would even help you out of tricky （棘手的） situations with their well-meaning advice.

Good friends who value you will create space in their life for you. In today’s fast-paced age, we are often noticing how we spend our time, and if you find your friends making time and space for you（陪伴）.

Yes, your friends have a role to play when you’re going through a crisis, say a heartbreak or the loss of job. They will help you with good quality counsel （建议）

In a nutshell, a good friend is also a guide to you. With these tips, you can create a pool of good friendships for life. Remember what you choose for yourself today has an important bearing on your tomorrow.

In 1997, 12-year-old American girl Caitlin and 14-year-old Zimbabwean (津巴布韦人) Martin became pen friends through their schools. They didn’t realize at that time how their handwritten letters would change their lives.

It all began as a school task. Everyone in Caitlin’s class was supposed to choose a pen friend from another country. All the other kids picked countries like France or Germany, but Caitlin chose Zimbabwe because the name sounded exotic (异国的) and cool.

Martin lived with his family in one of Zimbabwe’s worst slums (贫民窟) where they shared one room with another family. And a bed was their only piece of furniture.

When Caitlin’s first letters reached Martin, they were simple and general. The two kids wrote about their favorite music and what they liked to do. But as Martin gradually revealed more about his life and his letters started arriving written on pieces of trash, Caitlin realized what the living conditions were like for Martin. Without telling her parents, she began sending money with her letters—$ 20 at a time. While the money was not much to Caitlin, it meant more food for Martin’s family and enabled him to pay his school fees.

It lasted six years from their first exchange of letters to Martin’s arrival in the United States. With the help of the money from Caitlin’s parents later on, Martin finished his university and got his MBA from Duke University.

Today, Caitlin and Martin aren’t only best friends, but they also share their story in a book called I Will Always Write Back. They want to encourage readers to look beyond their own lives and do something kind for others, which might greatly influence their lives.