In our fast-paced world, a small act of kindness can go a long way, brightening someone's day in unexpected ways. Kyle Jauregui and his family experienced such an act of kindness when they went to a grocery store to pick up a birthday cake for his younger sister, Madison. While collecting the cake, they received a heartwarming surprise as they discovered that it had already been paid for by a stranger, per ABC News.
Representative Image Source: Pexels I Photo by Taryn Elliott
Ashley Santi, the stranger who paid for the cake, did so in honor of her late daughter on what would have been her 10th birthday. In 2008, Scottsdale-based Ashley Santi faced an immense tragedy when her only child, McKenna, died at 9 months old from a traumatic brain injury after a television set fell on her in a freak accident.
After her daughter's death, Santi learned about The MISS Foundation's Kindness Project through a support group. The foundation encouraged her to carry out random acts of kindness in honor of her daughter. She started doing that but, on her daughter's birthday, Santi wanted to do something extra special. She said, "I thought: I'll pay for a birthday cake for someone else that day," per TODAY.com.
Representative Image Source: Pexels I Photo by Taryn Elliott
To honor her daughter, starting in 2010, Santi made it a tradition to anonymously pay for a birthday cake for a stranger on December 27, McKenna’s birthday. She goes to a grocery store or bakery and pays for a pre-ordered cake. The cake always comes with a card signed, "McKenna's mom."
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Photo by Ami Suhzu
While the recipient of the cake usually doesn't find out who paid for it, something different happened in 2017. Santi and her story were acknowledged, thanks to the power of social media. When Kyle found out that his little sister's birthday cake had already been paid for, he took to X to share this kind act. He posted a couple of pictures of his sister along with the birthday cake and the heartfelt note that accompanied it.
The note read, "Dear birthday girl family, in honor of my daughter’s 10th birthday I have chosen your birthday cake to pay for. Each year I do this random act of kindness because I am unable to buy my daughter a cake of her own. Today is her big double-digit birthday. Please enjoy your day."
Kyle shared that his family was "speechless" and thanked her. He also wished the late daughter a happy birthday, ending the post with, "There's still good in this world." The post has been liked 162,000 times and has been reshared 48,000 times as of now. X users have also expressed their gratitude for the kind gesture in the comments section.
That is incredible sweet.
— Jen Shea (@jze98) December 29, 2017
Kyle expressed how Madison was feeling blessed and said she felt she had a guardian angel with her on her birthday. “I think it was overwhelming for my sister,” he said. “She just felt a little bit of extra love and extra blessed that day and felt like she had a guardian angel looking over her."
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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.