The coronavirus pandemic may have closed international borders, but it also united people in shared struggles. In 2021, a Maori man named Jarom Ngakuru (@jaromngakuru), who was working in the U.S., was devastated when he couldn’t attend his grandmother’s funeral in New Zealand. Seeing his grief, Ngakuru's American co-workers surprised him with a traditional Maori dance that moved him to tears, according to Good Morning America.
Representative Image Source: Stylized figures in positions of maori haka dance in clothing reminiscent of rugby players. (Getty Images)
Ngakuru, heartbroken at not being able to say goodbye to his grandmother, shared with Good Morning America: “It was my nan, my mum’s mum. She passed away. I grew up with her. She is a big influence on my life. She was my last grandparent alive on Earth.” He added that in New Zealand when someone passes away, they bury them in the ground “really, really quick.” His grandmother was buried within just two days of her passing. “By the time I would be able to fly back home, and make it from America, I was going to miss her funeral,” he said.
He added that he couldn’t fly home even if he tried to, since New Zealand restricted people from flying in and out because of COVID. So, while he was struggling with utter grief, his co-workers came together to help him heal. “And they just said, ‘Hey we’re here,’” Jarom recalled, “We already know what’s happening. We got together a bunch of things for you.” He revealed that his friends got him a bag of treats from a little store in New Zealand, his hometown, along with a card that had a heartwarming message written on it.
In addition to all that, they planned a thoughtful gesture by secretly learning the traditional Maori dance called “haka,” which is usually performed at significant events like weddings and funerals. The group was led by Jarom’s brother-in-law, Tongan, who also lives in America, and taught them the haka dance in just 24 hours. In May 2024, Jarom uploaded a short TikTok clip featuring their performance that brought tears to his eyes back in 2021.
Representative Image Source: Unsplash | Ardian Lumi
"The hardest part about living in America is that we live so far away. I couldn't make it home for my nan's funeral and I was broken! So my boys at work learned the haka without me knowing and brought home to me,” he wrote in the caption of the video. The clip shows the group of men passionately performing the traditional dance while vigorously slapping their chests and yelling chants in powerful voices. The tribe Ngapuhi, to which Jarom belongs, has its own style of performing haka, Jarom told Good Morning America. Describing his feelings after watching his coworkers perform the traditional dance, Jarom added, “The emotion I felt was like love and passion. Like compassion towards them all.”
The video resonated with viewers from New Zealand to Florida, prompting heartwarming comments. “Actually the best haka ove seen done by Americans,” commented @kiwi_the_bro. While @danisdailydose said, “This shows how loved you are over in the States by your workmates. the effort and time they put in to learn and bring home to you. So cool bro!”
Image Source: TikTok | @octanesmama
Image Source: TikTok | @thehealthyhalo
Speaking to Good Morning America, Jarom admitted, “I obviously felt alone, having nobody around me in my family. And I was like, kind of, in my own little bubble,” he said, “But they just showed support, and in a way that I was like, ‘Whoa, this is crazy!’ I never saw it coming, but it helped me relieve a lot of stress, knowing that I have family here, even when I can’t be there.”
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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.