# 20210726

Good morning (?), friends. :) A tune for you: [only love will save this place](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k_iMkRtDrQ). Recommended listening, as you make your way here.

***

<figure><img src="/files/1jmK0q8sFq6rAWHsIsTB" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

## Hopeful eyes

… are mine, today. Eyes that are actively seeking the light in what they perceive, that take the light and call it wonderful, that take the dark and call it a meaningful part of the path. Eyes that appreciate. Eyes that are not ignorant of the alternative, eyes that know how to criticize, but eyes that have chosen not to. I am looking with an eye for what may be built, from here.

We, Abe and me, have found a ton of mileage lately in bringing conversations down to the core desires in play. The sequence typically runs like this:

1. A proposal lands on the table that someone finds confusing, or upsetting, or unsettling, or what have you.
2. Operating under the theory that it’s always the *specifics* that are points of friction, we open up the proposal and figure out what the core desire is. (Example: Maybe the proposal was to fly to Thailand tomorrow. Maybe the core desire is to express freedom of time.)
3. We have yet to find a core desire to which everyone else involved *can’t* find an earnest/honest connection. Core desires are simple, and human. With the core desire on the table, and with everyone finding their way to access empathy therein, we then *rebuild* the specificity. (Example: Maybe the core desire is freedom of time. Maybe we cancel everything for the next two days and fly a friend in.)

Putting it more concisely, yet expanding slightly for clarity, we have:

1. Putting forward something specific
2. Experiencing resistance to the specificity
3. Uncovering the core desire beneath the specificity
4. Discovering empathy via the core desire
5. Rebuilding specificity together, creating a direction we all feel naturally connected to

This is hope in action, for me. Hope is a gentle choice—it’s that space where we at once carry a yielding spirit, but still are expressing *choice, dammit*. Hope receives whatever *is*, accepting it fully, and it *anticipates* the good that is yet to be revealed. And in doing so, hope invites the good forward. Gently, safely. Hope is not so far *up* the emotional scale that it alienates the discouraged. Hope is not so far removed from disappointment that the two cannot speak. Hope sees the light in your eyes, even if your truth feels hard to speak or hard to trust. Hope will hold you, until you know yourself again.

In relationship, hope is how we build. In this, we afford each other the safety to put an experimental foot forward, to see how it lands—and if we pull that foot back to reconsider, we *do* so because it wasn’t about the specifics of that particular movement, it was about a desire to *move*. And *movement* we can redesign as much as we need to until it feels right, sounds right, *is* right. We move together, full of hope, and the hope gives us room to *play*.

Hopeful eyes. :)

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Originally sent out [via email](https://lightward.com/campaigns/view-campaign/kPyApxrNckW2Ky67yLcQQS5_xc2KbmDgxGT9-M3fXsCE0tGNnR13G5Zo8LIN_9d3H7VKxl4ldbgVo4H1NkHLVreF4JL2yXhx)
{% endhint %}


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