Here we are again, in the season of graduations and weddings, with a fresh new crop of young people who find themselves embarking on a whole new foreign world.

While I am certainly no expert, allow me the chance to impart a single suggestion on what you are about to face: take out your trash.

Certain studies are showing that we’re not quite as prepared and ready as we think we are for these important life steps of college, jobs and marriages.

And it is not for the reason – or reasons – you may think, like the standard preparation for classes or a job. No, on the contrary, we’re fairly well educated and well trained.

The problem is, we just don’t communicate very well.

Last year, 60 percent of employers surveyed by Workforce Solutions Group said that applicants lacked communication and interpersonal skills – a 10 percent increase in just two years’ time. Employers want people who can plan, organize and prioritize, but also be team players and problem solvers.

But how can we be problem solvers in our jobs if we can’t solve the problems in our personal lives? It is there where our problem solving skills are fortified, or in most cases, not.

We all seem to have a cluster of friendships and relationships that sit awkwardly unresolved because we don’t address the problems that put them in that state.

It is a choice to be passive in this regard. Lack of action is still an action. We cannot do well until we do better.

This increasingly unsocial society, where we freely state in text – whether typed in e-mail, text or on a social media screen – what we are not willing to say, or would never say, in person is the single biggest societal issue we face. And it is clearly one that permeates all aspects of our lives.

Communication is the backbone to everything we can hope to do in our lives. It is what makes us human, what makes us emote. If we pull back from those things, the only thing we’re left with is the direction we’re taking now: a society of people who cannot communicate with each other in more than 140 characters and emoji’s.

Humanity needs a better human relations plan.

So try this: picture your life as a series of trash cans of varying sizes. Each trash can represents something in your life: relationships, friendships, work, fitness, health, and so on. In each situation, you are willing to put up with so much in order to keep it going.

With friends, you will swallow a certain level of perceived “wrongdoing” on the other side’s behalf. An unreturned phone call is forgivable, yet you still feel slighted, so it goes into the metaphorical trash can. A dis from the same friend, a betrayal, not being invited to something, a missed birthday, those all pile up until one day, they throw something somewhat meaningless onto the pile – a banana peel let’s say – and now, well, you’ve had it.

We do this with virtually everything in life. We’ll put up with so much at work and stay until the trash can is full. The trash cans might vary in size, as we’re more willing to forgive our spouse than say, a co-worker. But in relative terms, we’ll keep plugging away to maintain whatever is left of that particular relationship until that final banana peel causes the trash can to spill over and cause our crazy to come streaming out, raw, emotional and unfiltered.

The difference, of course, with relationships and friendships is that there is a real person on the other side, probably with their own can of “trash” you don’t even realize you threw away on them.

And it is never really about that last banana peel. It was about the collection of items that filled up the can before it.

It was about the fact that neither of you really ever emptied the trash. You didn’t talk through it.

Why? Because you were just too busy? Because life got in the way? Because it just didn’t matter?

Perhaps it is because you didn’t think it mattered much to you at the time. Well, clearly you never fully pulled an Elsa and just “let it go.” Or maybe it is because you thought that saying something at the time about it might hurt their feelings.

But that all that unspoken, undiscussed, unresolved trash does build up until one of you – or both – determines the damage done, the trash is full and now it truly just isn’t worth carrying around all those heaping, stinky bags.

Look, this human interaction stuff isn’t easy – that’s why so many friendships, marriages and relationships fail.

We are all individuals with different backgrounds, upbringing, history, emotions, experiences and interests. More often than not, we forget to respect those awesome nuances that make us unique.

Maybe we just need to quit trying to force everyone to see our side or agree with us.

Too much time is wasted spinning our wheels trying to convince cyber friends that we are perfect. Our hair isn’t perfect, our clothes are not perfect. Our bodies are not perfect. Our families and homes and cars, they are not perfect. And they do not make us, us. They do not accurately represent who we are. On the contrary, how we treat each other does best represent who we are.

I tend to believe that not everyone is meant to stay in your life forever. Some come and go and are a mere footnote in the index of your Book of Life. Not every relationship and friendship is worth saving or meant to be saved.

Then again, you’ll go through life pretty lonely without investing in others, because I’ve found it means a whole lot more to share it with those who matter, the ones that care, that root for you to win, that will share your sorrow.

If you’ve found someone or someones that somehow or another chose to interact with you and your own brand of weirdness, try a little harder to keep that proverbial trash can less than full.

The question is simple, then. Is it worth it? Whether you’ve been friends for 40 years or 4 months, it meant something to both of you at some point no matter when or how you met.

Maybe it was on a school playground in kindergarten.

Maybe it was because of a shared interest or activity.

Maybe it was an attraction or a dance or a song or by proximity.

But we all managed to make some friends. The trick is keeping them. And the best way to do it is simple.

Just take out the trash every once in a while.

Don’t make a landfill of your life.