Having good neighbors can truly be a blessing. They contribute to a pleasant environment and positively influence our thoughts and feelings. London-based content creator Martina Panchetti (@maartinapanchetti) experienced this firsthand when the kids in her neighborhood sent her a heartwarming letter.
Panchetti shared a video showing the letter and explaining the backstory. The kids in her neighborhood would play the piano every morning, which was becoming a bit too noisy for her. She wrote them a polite letter asking if they could reduce the noise, especially early in the morning. "We sent a letter to our neighbors politely asking them to make less noise (they’re a family with kids) and possibly avoid playing piano too early in the morning. This is how they replied,” she wrote in the video’s overlay text.
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Rdne
Panchetti then showed a yellow square envelope with a turquoise cartoon globe sticker. Inside the envelope, a banana yellow card revealed a note scribbled in childlike handwriting with a blue pen. The note is addressed to “dear neighbors.” The text on the inner flap of the card read, “Thank you for your kind message. We realize that sometimes we can be noisy and naughty.” The kids went on to elaborate on the reason why they played piano every morning. “We started learning piano and teachers tell us to practice every day.”
Representative Image Source: Pexels | pixabay
They apologized for the poor timing and mentioned that their mom had also asked them to avoid playing the piano in the mornings. “We sincerely apologize for not considering the times of the day and the weekends. To be honest, Mommy has been telling us not to play in the mornings and she also wants us to get some sleep on the weekend.” The kids promised Panchetti that they would try to be “more considerate.” As an added token of apology, they told her that they were sending some of their “national Azeri sweets” along with the letter, with an added disclaimer that said, “P.S: Not nut-free!” The tots signed the letter as “your loud neighbors,” decorating it with red heart doodles.
The video then displayed two plastic boxes containing sweets and biscuits, with the overlay text reading, “They also sent their national sweets. We are in tears.” To return the favor, Panchetti said she would send her neighbors some Italian sweets. “On our way to cook some Italian sweets for them,” she described in the video's caption.
Image Source: TikTok | @masumariazali
The video has crossed 10 million views, over 700,000 likes, and nearly 2,000 comments. One TikToker, @rahimagsmv, described the sweets that were shown in the video, “That is shekerbura and bakhlava.”
@kelsey_jade1 said, “This would make me wanna put together a sorry basket for them.” Another one (@dmiamim24) expressed, “I feel like I would have immediately written a letter back saying sorry, forget I said anything.”
Image Source: TikTok | @hacw1
Several people shared their own heartfelt experiences with their neighbors. @April.nicole, for example, said that she had a neighbor kid who would practice saxophone outside every afternoon. “It was horrendous at first but eventually it became very enjoyable to sit outside and be serenaded by beautiful music,” she said.
Image Source: TikTok | @middled_nope
@mlbolster also recalled having kids in the neighborhood that were very loud. “One day, I was getting ready to write a note when someone knocked on my door. It was my neighbor with a cake and an apology - just knowing she knew and was worried about her neighbors; doing her best for kiddos stuck in a small apt - every sound I heard from then on just made me smile for those kids.”
You can follow Martina Panchetti on TikTok and Instagram for more content related to travel, lifestyle, and wholesome memes!
This article originally appeared 4 months ago.
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.