Oh yes.
Oh yes. Camilla Bandeira / GETTY

My mom is one of those exceedingly nice people who compliments random strangers on the street. Often, it's because they have a cute dog and my mom loooves dogs. But she never limits herself to four-legged appreciation, and I've been with her on numerous occasions when she stops a woman walking by to offer kind words about her dress, her hair, her jewelry, her baby... When I was younger, this mortified the hell out of me. These days, it makes me feel equal parts fondness for my mom's inherent mode of being warm and sweet to whomever she meets, and melancholy for that day that when she's gone and there is one less person on the street spreading care and compassion.

It has a lot to do with her career—she went back to school to get a degree in rehabilitative psychology and, as a counselor, prefers to practice the humanistic approach and unconditional positive regard that psychologist Carl Rogers founded and developed in the 1950s. But her regard has always extended past her office into daily life, and as she's gotten older, she's become more liberal with her compliments.

According to the National Day Calendar (which informs us what we should be celebrating on any given date—today also happens to be National Beer Can Appreciation Day and National Peanut Butter Day), a compliment can have a rather potent effect—it boosts confidence, improves the mood of the person getting it, and indicates that the person giving it is paying attention. 'Course, a certain level of sincerity is necessary, since being inauthentic is oftentimes worse than saying nothing at all.

Unlike my mom, most people don't do much complimenting in our daily lives, even to the people we care about or love. It's one of those things that maybe starts out heavy in a new relationship, but tapers off the deeper you get into it, until you're not talking to each other anymore about positive things, but bitching about the things you hate or that pissed you off at any given moment throughout the day. In our current climate, with a great divide between Trump lovers and sane people, compliments seem more important than ever. Simply being nice helps.

My point is that you should go out on a limb today and throw someone a compliment like you're throwing a bone, or even a life vest. Compliment someone you love about how they look, or something they wrote (ahem), or compliment someone you don't know because they have a cool hat, or because you noticed them doing something nice. Likely, the person you pick needs to hear some kind words, and you might just make their day.