On a chilly night in Wisconsin, October 13, 2018, Natalie Barnes, a Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) driver, was doing her usual route. As she steered the bus through the streets, she noticed a frequent rider, Richard, sitting quietly in the corner, looking unusually somber. Concerned, Natalie kept an eye on him until he approached her with five heartbreaking words. What followed was an act of kindness from Natalie that would change Richard’s life. Their interaction, captured by MCTS’ surveillance camera, was later reported by CNN.
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Brett Sayles
“I am officially homeless now,” the man said as he walked to her. "Why? What happened?" Natalie exclaimed. He revealed that his home was condemned and he had been living on the streets for a week. Disheartened, Natalie offered him some food, which he humbly declined. Then she offered him a place where he could stay warm — the bus. "Well, I'm on this bus 'til 2:44," she can be heard saying in the footage. "You want to stay with me then?"
"Okay," the man responded. Natalie kept driving while the homeless man sat in a corner, and when her shift came to a close, she again offered to buy him food. This time, he agreed. "I don't know what to say, but to say thank you," he told her, "I'll give it back to you,” to which Natalie replied, "No you won't!" She even called a friend of hers and helped Richard by bringing him to a community shelter, where he could work on securing permanent housing.
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Time Grocery
“At some point in our lives, everybody needs help,” the generous driver said, per CNN. “I wanted to do what I could to help Richard in some way.” Not just food and shelter, Natalie even offered Richard her friendship. She revealed that he often calls her to talk and check in. “He thanks me every time he talks to me for helping him. He calls me his little guardian angel,” she said. “I’m happy to say that he’s progressing well.’
Impressed by Natalie’s kind deed, MCTS executive Chris Abele said, “Natalie demonstrated what we all need to do to fight homelessness: to look out for each other, to care for each other, and to work together. I’m deeply grateful for Natalie’s actions,” per the official MCTS website. For her kind act, she was later honored by Abele with the transit service’s “Excellence Award.” According to a Facebook post by MCTS, she was also awarded the "Brave Hearts Awards" by the American Red Cross of Wisconsin.
Those five words that Richard spoke to Natalie not only changed his life but also Natalie’s life forever. In the present day, Natalie carries extra peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to share with the riders who may be starving and need a meal, according to the transit service. Her act is a reminder of what the kind act of just one person can do to this world.
Ladder leads out of darkness.Photo credit 
Woman's reflection in shadow.Photo credit 
Young woman frazzled.Photo credit 
Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.