I like when hope is small; glinting. A friend emailed a note of hope so microcosmic as to be near invisible.

I’m sure you cannot either.

This is more reassurance than hope. I would have tremendous trouble explaining the hope I glean from this phrase, and yet I’ve distilled it down to the only part of it you need to understand: that we can assume we agree on something very important.

I watch the message get bumped to a second page of my inbox as more mundane emails, less hopeful, flood this one into the growing middle. It happens so much more quickly than expected because I get entirely too many emails because there are no good ways to sustain a note in the digital era, except to repeat your voice.

Another friend and I have a long conversation the other night. We are catching up on so much. It’s propelled by our listening to “Long Season” by Fishmans together through social media. She has such exquisite taste in music. I’m listening to this now for the nth time.

She gives me a message of hope. Half jokingly, she quotes Issa’s famous haiku:

O Snail,
Climb Mt. Fuji
Slowly, slowly

I can’t ignore the speed of hope. I’m sure you cannot either.