Showing up for a friend’s bad day is a choice they’ll remember longer than any gift.

Presence is expensive in the only currency that reads as real, which is time you could have spent elsewhere. A gift can be arranged from a distance, and sitting with someone while nothing improves cannot. That is why it registers so differently. People forget what you gave and remember who was there.

Someone you know is having a hard stretch right now. Go, or call, without a solution prepared and without needing the visit to fix anything. Staying twenty minutes while it is still awkward is the whole thing.