On the second floor of Poole Museum, visitors usually come across galleries that display stories of gypsies, travelers, and famous people that shaped the history of the coastal town of Poole in Dorset. In one corner sits a glass cabinet, inside which there is a small rock that isn't an ancient artifact but has a heartwarming backstory dating back to the summer of 2019. The story is printed on a piece of paper and displayed alongside the rock in the glass cabinet, and the museum shared pictures of the stone along with the note in a Facebook post.
Magnetite rock specimen from mining and quarrying industries. (Representative Image Source: Getty Images | Kwhisky)
In August 2019, the curators of Poole Museum were guiding visitors as usual, just when a young girl by the name of Bethan, walked into the second floor with her mom. After strolling through various galleries and discussing them with her mom, she walked to a museum curator and extended her palm towards them with a little rock in it. It was her most precious rock and she had decided to donate it to the museum. Her only condition was that the rock be put behind the glass and looked after, so everyone could see and enjoy it. The museum staff honored her innocent request and since then the ordinary yet special stone in the glass cabinet has been labeled “Bethan’s Rock.” “Thank you for letting us look after it. It will be treasured,” the museum wrote in the Facebook post.
Encapsulating a little girl’s sentiments and the wonder of childhood, the rock has become a popular attraction among travelers, some of whom visit the museum only to catch a glimpse of it. Meanwhile, people are also praising museum curators for honoring the kid’s request as this small gesture will continue to inspire the girl to seek more adventures, collect rare stones, and explore the world. “This is how you inspire children to learn,” wrote Elliot Rennie, commenting on the rock’s picture on Facebook. Others are saying that it is the “most beautiful rock ever.”
A young girl looking at an exhibit in a glass display case in a museum, Lyme Regis, Dorset, UK (Representative Image Source: Getty Images | Urbancow)
On Reddit where the same pictures were shared by a local, u/Clopidee in the r/mademesmile group, more than 113,000 people upvoted it. u/woolfiend8 commented, “In 200 years, this will be a priceless artifact!” u/destroyeroyer2 said that this exhibit would be much more interesting to the visitors than the regular exhibits, given its emotional value. “It's a close contest between Bethan's Rock and a log boat made from the trunk of a single oak tree that dates back to 295 BC,” u/clopidee replied.
Comment by u/cantpronatwork praising the gesture (Image Source: Reddit)
In November 2021, the museum announced on Facebook that Bethan’s rock was becoming an international phenomenon. Encouraged by the overwhelming response, the museum launched a gallery solely showcasing rocks with interesting geological stories. “We can’t match Bethan’s example, but we hope you enjoy finding out more about our sample of Goethite and rock collecting anyway,” the post read. Currently, the museum is closed for renovation and will open sometime at the end of 2024, with fresh galleries displaying shipwrecks and log boats, of course alongside Bethan’s rock.
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.