A Kumbaya Moment

The current issue of The New Yorker has an article about the history, for lack of a better word, of suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. This passage, however, has haunted me all day:

Dr. Jerome Motto, who has been part of two failed suicidebarrier 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.'"

I lived in San Francisco for about three years and I still love the city. There were times, there, however, when I felt very isolated and would have given anything for a smile or a kind word. If you have the opportunity, smile at a stranger some time (without, of course, taking any foolish risks) or offer someone a kind word. It could mean a lot to them. It could even mean their life.

Comments

[akaky]

dostoyevsky could've written a novel about that last story. 750,000 people live in sf and not one person smiled at this man? too depressing for words

[donna]

Not to belittle the situation, but he would have been in control of the situiation had he said:

If I smile at one person on the way, I will not jump.'"

[Randy Paul]

Donna,

You're right of course, but he was obviously depressed and being depressed certainly makes you feel unempowered.