This morning I woke up and checked my email. There wasn’t much; my email is well-organized and heavily filtered. Something about a check. A reminder for an application eager to be filled out. I was too drowsy to pull myself to the shower, so I let my vision blur with sleepiness for a few seconds.

Along the right side of my screen, a stack of grey, clickable boxes sharply contrasts the general blur of emails. I refocused. Most of my emails from the last few days provide the option to “Track Package.” My books for the upcoming semester. I feel giddy. Something about packages in the mail makes me giddy. I get up and take a shower.

I live a blessed life as a liberal arts student; these packages are a second Christmas. They are full of lovely books that I would gladly purchase for their own sake. And they’re the gift that keeps on giving: I can expect to be receiving packages for about the next two weeks. There will be the sweet smell of new books—sadly, a smell that is often overshadowed by the smell of old books—and a beautiful new array of colorful bindings to grace my bookshelves.

As I sit here writing, these packages have yet to arrive. Maybe they’ll come later today, or maybe tomorrow or the day after. I hope they come today.

There is something young and happily naive about hoping for packages. It is not made of same stuff as those early childhood birthdays: anxiousness, shaking presents, staring at calendars, running around screaming my lungs out while wearing underwear on my head (years five and six of my life were rather dark times in this respect). Even so, my present hope shares in the mood of that younger, greener hope. It isn’t risky.

There is no good reason for me to be hoping. Whether I hope or not, the packages will arrive when they will. I’m not hoping against the odds, so my hope isn’t being sustained like it sometimes is. In dire straits, hope for the unrealistic can be the only way to stay sane. This hope is too ridiculously safe to be worth anything. Its fulfillment is guaranteed by Amazon’s good name.

It would be worthless, except for the point that it is still hope. I think that packages are the training wheels of real life. They teach that there is something effective about hopeful anticipation. Packages help us become comfortable with the natural rhythm of life: hope into fulfillment. Almost any human action can be broken down into desires and trying to achieve them. Packages remind us that this is possible. Look forward to packages in the mail is easy; sometimes we need something easy that reminds us that hard is worth it.