I’m not sure exactly when this game started. I don’t even remember when I first noticed what I was doing. I just know it frequently lifts my spirits when I need a boost.
It sounds silly. It sounds like something a child might do. But it makes me happy — and I’ve realized it lets me bring a brief bit of joy to others along my way every day. And it’s super simple.
The game? I count how many times each day that I can get people to smile — when they clearly hadn’t felt like smiling beforehand.
Ridiculous? Maybe. Childlike? Absolutely. Life-changing? Maybe.
Dr. Jerome Motto was involved with attempts to curb suicide in the San Francisco Bay Area for years. One of his patients committed suicide by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge in 1963, but the retired physician told the New Yorker in 2003 that the suicide which affected him the most occurred in the 1970s. After a man jumped to his death, Motto learned something that left him chilled.