There’s something about showing up for people when they aren’t ready, and even when they don’t even know how to ask. I used to think giving back was giving money or volunteering at huge, organized charity events. But I’m finding out, that the gift sometimes really is your physical presence.
I heard from a friend a few months ago who I hadn’t talked to in some time. We weren’t best friends or anything, but we’d vibed a bit during an online writing challenge. She’d had a rough run her mum had just had surgery and she’d been mentally fatigued by being the only one in charge at home.
And at first, I didn’t know what to say. All I wrote was, “How are you holding up?” But I sent it anyway, with a voice note, and I let her talk if she felt the need to. Much to my amazement she responded fully. It was not even about the surgery it was about how tired she was, how invisible she had been feeling for months, and how she was not sure how long she could keep all of this together.
I didn’t give her advice. I didn’t try to fix it. I just showed up online. I would check in with a brief note or voice note every morning for the next week. Sometimes she would answer, sometimes she wouldn’t. But one day she said, ‘You don’t even know what you’ve done. Just realizing that somebody remembered that I existed made all the difference.”
That moment hit me. It wasn’t a donation. It wasn’t a public gesture. But it mattered.
And then there’s the online community I joined a while back. It’s small, but supportive. One day someone posted that they were overwhelmed and didn’t know if they had it in them to write. I also remembered how I felt when I was on the verge of giving up and so I left a long comment, told my story of how I once wrote a post which didn’t even get 5 page views and yet I still moved on.
I didn’t pay much attention to it, until this person messaged me days later and said that they had written again because of something I’d said. That’s when it clicked giving back doesn’t always have to be noisy. Sometimes it’s in the comment section. It’s occasionally an answer to a text. Often it’s that, you just consistently show that someone matters.
I always thought of giving back as something to be done later, for adults with big jobs and big wallets. But as I have since learned, even when you have little, you can be a lifeline. Particularly in this age of digital noise, of people being surrounded by noise but feeling so alone!
So, how do I give back? I try to listen. I go out of my way to do a follow-up, even when it’s not convenient. I try to remember what people tell me names and hardships. It’s not perfect, and I don’t get it right all the time. Yet I’ve seen how these small acts send ripples out into transformative things.
Perhaps one day I will have more to give in terms of money, time or platform. But for now, I offer what I can: my attention, my voice, my support. And if that makes someone feel seen, I think that’s more than enough.
Note
[Original and AI free]
Images designed on Canva by me
