As graduation approaches, so does the reality of my friends and I being miles apart and even continents away from one another. The constant question is how we will stay in touch. While I know many of my friends and I have the type of friendship that will pick up right where it left off, I want to be proactive about fully knowing what is happening in their lives and not allowing distance to be a reason to prevent me from doing so. Many ideas have been thrown around: a weekly newsletter, voice memos, calling, facetime, vlogging, and simply texting. Even though many of these are clever and some hilarious, I have been honing in on how to be intentional with keeping up. 

I will admit that with many of my childhood friendships I rely on how we have the unique ability to reconnect as though months and even years have not passed. I love this about many of my childhood friendships, but that is the beauty of knowing someone for 12+ years. There is no pressure to know everything happening in their lives, those friendships have a foundation of steel, one forged from the endurance of growing up together. 

However, with Covid and how quickly college has flown by, I feel as though some of my lovely friendships are only just now blooming. I’m left wondering how to maintain the ones established, my best friends from college, and how to nurture the friendships with people I wish I had met sooner. A great way to keep in the know of what is happening in one’s life is through social media. While social media is great in generally knowing what people are up to, I do not want to know about my friends’ lives solely through social media. I think our society has accepted social media as a sole means of keeping in touch, but it is not a way to know what is happening in someone’s day to day life or the struggles that we rely on our friends to be there during. You may find out someone is engaged, but you will not likely know the details of their relationship from social media alone. 

This has been at the forefront of my mind. I am considering how best to maintain my friendships from college as we approach moving away from our small college town and how best to. I do not know exactly how I will go about keeping in touch and making sure I know of the small things happening in my friends’ lives, not just the big things, but I do know that I want it to be intentional and thoughtful as I truly want to be in their lives even if we are miles apart.