What's the thing that you want that is so good and so beautiful and so perfect that you almost

hesitate to let yourself believe it could ever happen.

You've got something like that, right? I mean, I gotta think everybody's got something like that.

And I'm not talking about stupid, greedy stuff that you know you probably shouldn't want,

but I'm talking about stuff that you're pretty

sure you want the right way and for the right reasons. I'm talking about the stuff that is

stitched into the level of the heart for a person like the person who doesn't have kids but wants to have kids.

It's almost too difficult to even allow yourself to hope that that's going to happen.

Or the person who's alone, but feels like they'd be great at being in love with somebody and wants to

experience that but it just hasn't happened. Or the person who's got a friend or a

loved one who's in a bad way and they want to see that person come around and

things work out for them.

Or the person who has aspirations to contribute something or do something,

maybe it's a career or way of life or whatever it is,

or the person who has a vision for the world and helping the stuff that's broken and the people who hurt but there are obstacles and you don't know how to do it.

That kind of stuff. I have stuff like that. I think everybody has a picture of

something that would be good and beautiful that maybe in the super secret

quiet places it's okay to long for but you're almost afraid to even articulate

it out loud because it seems like too much to ask for or too much to hope for.

I don't think this is a modern phenomenon. I don't think this is an ancient phenomenon. I think this is a human phenomenon because life is

bittersweet, it's beautiful and it's painful and if it was just one or the

other that would disabuse us of any of these notions of hope, but it's stinking both and therein lies the problem.

...