nice things

Here's what I want. I want all of us to get our

hopes up. I want us to get our hopes up so high and clear. I

want us to get our hopes up to the place where we can barely

reach them with our fingertips. I want to get our hopes up. I

personally want to get our hopes up starting with mine. I'm tired

of keeping my expectations low. I'm tired of hoping that I

didn't hope for too much. I'm tired of trying to avoid the

plane crash before it takes off. I'm tired of staying on the

ground. I'm tired. I'm tired of all of this. And I want us to

get our hopes up so high. So high, we float above the trees

and the mountain tops so that we can see how everything how

everything how everything is connected. Like in the Sword in

the Stone when he goes flying. And there are no borders from up

there. It's not entirely true that there are no borders. When

I was 19 and I flew to France to study abroad, I looked down from

the plane window as we took off from New York. And I saw my

familiar landscape, the woods of New England, but they were

criss-crossed with something I had never noticed before. In all

of the flying I had done, I had never seen New England quite

like this before. It was criss-crossed with these little

black lines, these little black lines everywhere, everywhere

coming and going. Irregular, unpredictable, broken. And I

realized after a while, those lines, those lines are the stone

walls, those the stone walls that I took for granted until I

moved out of New England and discovered that not every place

is made 50% rocks and 50% dirt. But as it turns out, those rock

walls tell us the story of a piece of the history of that

land. Just a piece. But those borders are ones that are easily

crossed. And when you meet with your neighbor to walk the stone

wall and put the stones back in place, it's not to keep you

apart. Boundaries are not the worst thing in the world as it

turns out. And getting our hopes up is a kind of open-ness to

boundaried-ness that will allow us to move forward. Having your

hopes up is sometimes about believing in people's abilities

to do better, to do good, to meet the world where it needs to

be met. And that's what these walls are. That's what these

boundaries are. That's what these hopes are: these hopes

that you will not encounter too much terribleness in front of

you when you walk out the front door with your coffee. That

there will be enough space for you to believe in the goodness

of the world just one more day just once more, perhaps? Maybe

twice. Let's find out. Let's keep walking. Let's keep moving.

Let's keep opening doors. Let's keep rolling forward. Let's keep

going and keep going and keep going. Let's not have to stop

because the barriers are too high. Let's make sure that those

stairs also have a ramp. Let's make sure that everybody can get

through that door. I had an experience recently where

someone I love was supposed to have something they wanted very

much. And at the last minute, it didn't happen. It's still gonna

happen. But it's going to be a minute or two or six months

worth of minutes. And while they wait, they have to manage the

possibility that they wanted it too much, which is not really a

possibility. But we learn over time when we don't get and don't

get and don't get and our needs get sidestepped and moved aside

and pressed down and squashed and rolled over, that maybe our

needs don't matter; that maybe hoping for something, wanting it

deeply is the wrong way to go.

And there is a funny thing that happens. If you're desperate for

something, it's very tricky to find your way out of that

desperation. And almost always it is when you find your way out

of that desperation that you are then able to get the thing that

you needed or wanted. Even if it feels like it's outside of your

control. It's this weird... I don't know. I don't have words

for it. But I do know that I'm trying to simultaneously hold

the possibility of hope, and walk and move and roll and fly

and dream toward hope. But not just hope, because hope is, is

empty satisfaction; also toward action. Also, toward action.

Toward believing. Believing, not only in the possibility of

action, but the reality of action. Believing that even if

it doesn't come today it might come tomorrow. Believing that

these words, these ideas, this podcast, this place, will reach

out into the world and somehow tip over some domino, hit some

butterfly's wing, make some breeze somewhere that will

circle back and transform something. Something.

Something's gotta change, and we are the ones who have to change

it. And that can feel so overwhelming until we remember

that change starts at home, change starts right here, in my

two hands, in my throat, in my mouth, on my tongue, in my

dreams. Where I get my hopes up by imagining what else could be.