Reminder: Check In On Your Friends

By Amy Weiner

We live in a society that overwhelms us with reminders: don’t forget that deadline, make sure to get to this meeting on time, remember to send that email. This leaves arguably one of the most important too frequently forgotten: the reminder to check in on your friends. 

While we fight our own battles and work on getting through each day, we often overlook the fact that the people we love are doing the same thing. Part of our obligation in a world where people fight invisible battles and go through things we don’t even know about is to simply check in on them.

Especially during the pandemic, it became easy to lose touch with those who we didn’t see often anymore. However, this creates all the more reasons to reach out and see how your people are doing. This gesture is so small yet so powerful. Letting someone know you’re thinking about them, that you’re there for them, and care about how they’re doing is a testament to your regard for others, and can have meaningful effects for that individual. It also holds the potential to open up a stigmatized conversation that would have been hard for that person to initiate without your attention to their well-being. 

Mental Health Awareness Month is a time to be open-minded, and accept that we are all still learning how to be there for each other and better understand each other. Routinizing this small gesture is a minimal cost to being a thoughtful, caring friend. Moreover, it has never been easier to do so: As we dwell in the age of technology, prioritizing a mindful text over a mindless scroll through social media is an effortless change. We can all do our part and put in perspective that this duty should be at the top of our other list of reminders—and certainly never forgotten.