“Dr. Jerome Motto, who has been part of two failed suicide barrier coalitions, is now retired and living in San Mateo. When I visited him there, we spent three hours talking about the bridge. Motto had a patient who committed suicide from the Golden Gate in 1963, but the jump that affected him most occurred in the seventies. “I went to this guy’s apartment afterward with the assistant medical examiner,” he told me. “The guy was in his thirties, lived alone, pretty bare apartment. He’d written a note and left it on his bureau. It said, ‘I’m going to walk to the bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way, I will not jump.’” ” - Tad Friend, The New Yorker

I don’t care how ridiculous I look in doing so. From now on I’m smiling at every single stranger I see. We all do a pretty damn good job at hiding our real emotions on the inside and you just never know how truly awful somebody may be feeling at the moment. It could very well be some random person you pass by on the street tomorrow. The thing with smiles is that while the act of giving a smile may be pretty simple, the act of receiving a smile can be extraordinarily powerful and have the capability of completely turning a person’s day around. I just want them to know that there is somebody out there who wants them to have a nice day, regardless of whether they’re a stranger or not. It’s simply an act of kindness towards a fellow human being. I want them to know that somebody sincerely cares.