Hey. I have a crazy idea, but bear with me.

Let’s run away.

Let’s go to a place like Paris, or a place like Boston, or a place like New York, or a place like Peru. A place like that, but where there’s no hate. Where you can just breathe deep and breathe easy without a worry of who’s trying to kill you or who’s trying to kill your family or which friend’s name you’ll find on a list or how you’ll explain to children you don’t yet have why there are people who hate them. Because who hates children? Because people won’t hate children in this place. It’ll be fun.

There’ll be deep sea diving and deep breathing and homemade smoothies whenever things get a little stressful, because, I don’t know, some sand just won’t come out of your shoe or something. Because that will be the biggest problem, because there won’t be hate and there won’t be violence and there won’t be panic and there won’t be cell phones and there won’t be biased reporting that changes the course of history because there will be no hate.

Nope, no hate. Only smoothies.

Smoothies, of course, and also coffee with ice cream in it and whipped cream on top, whipped cream that catches the top of your lip as you laugh and attempt to attack the glass from the best angle, but you won’t know how, because you don’t have much experience with attacking. A pile of whipped cream so tall you won’t know how you can possibly conquer it. But no one judges, because hey, they’ve got their own smoothies or iced coffees to care about anyway.

And you finish your smoothie or iced coffee break and you lie out on the grass in the sun and feel the rays beating down on you, but here the sunrays are fantastic because cancers don’t exist and the happier you are the bronzier your skin becomes. No one calls you out for using the word bronzier, because they’re too busy grinning, holding their favorite book in one hand and feeling the cool grass between their fingers on the other hand and worrying on no hand because outside is perfectly safe. Because why wouldn’t it be? Listening for birds chirping and breezes rolling, because what else would they be listening for?

And you go for a hike and you climb to the top of that mountain and the only puffs you see in the sky are clouds and you think My God This is Amazing and you wonder just how many miracles are happening at that exact moment that you aren’t even aware of. And you twirl and you laugh and you take pictures with friends to be put in digital albums that are just for you, your friends, and no one else. Well, maybe also for the people who don’t like hiking but love the view. They don’t like hiking. But they don’t hate hiking, because, y’know.

And if someone’s hat flies off their head you run to catch it, and if perfect strangers are singing and dancing in the middle of the street in the middle of the day you join them, and if someone asks you the time, you say 6:11, because you have the time to tell him the time so why would you not?

And you try to go to sleep that night and you succeed. Because you know what you’re thinking about? Smoothies and iced coffee and cool grass and clouds shaped like all of those things, and you know you’ll sleep through the night, because no one hates you.

I’m almost positive we can run to this place, because I’ve gotten glimpses of it, and I’m almost positive this place exists. I’m almost positive it’s not a dream, but I don’t know. I haven’t been sleeping so well lately.

I’m almost positive.