After four days of marking mock exams, I was scrolling through Facebook in an effort to turn my mind off. I saw a death announcement with comments like, “She was so beautiful” and “She will be missed”. This led me to remember a car accident that took the life of a grade 12 student when I had just started high school. I remembered the vigil and the locker turned into a shrine, the words of love and affection on the news and at school.

At the time my mother asked, “Did anyone say these things when he was alive? Or is now just the appropriate time?”

That question has stayed with me ever since.

Last week, as part of an activity for Compassion Month at school, my co-advisor and I asked our students to write a letter to someone who had influenced them. I wrote to my first friend in Singapore and put the note on her desk. It was such an easy thing to do and I’d waited a really long time to do it.

Clearly, this is a problem. We wait too long to say the good things. Many of us are quick to get upset with others and quick to point out when we’ve been wronged, but how often do we look around and try to figure out what’s going on with the people around us? How much effort does it take, really, to say, “Hey, I see you.”

A friend and I have been talking about the problems we see with the wellness industry and a very significant one is that it has given us permission to look only at ourselves. All of this looking inward and improving the self has the effect of stopping us from looking at just about anything else. I’m supposed to focus on me, right? Everything else can wait.

In all of that wellness, how often do we apply what we do for ourselves to others? How often do we actually look at the people around us and acknowledge them the way we demand to be looked at and acknowledged?

I could go on much longer about this but the message I would like to emphasise is pretty simple: Spend a few minutes outside your own head and notice who is around you. Make sure to really look. Let them know that you see them.

Small things really can make a big difference.