Barbara Kingsolver, the celebrated novelist and essayist, opened her 2008 Duke University commencement address with these words—delivered in a rainstorm that would soak the entire ceremony. The weather became a running joke throughout her speech, but her opening was entirely serious: a poet's invocation of hope as both the minimum standard and the maximum aspiration for a human life. The image of running down hope's hallways, touching the walls on both sides, suggested not passive wishing but active inhabitation—living so fully inside your hopes that you feel their boundaries. It was a fitting frame for a speech that would challenge graduates to reimagine success, reject isolation, and rebuild community in an era of environmental crisis.