Editor’s note: We asked readers to submit what their hopes are for the new year. Here is a selection of those letters. We will publish the remainder on Thursday and Friday.

The possibility of repair

I have optimistic hopes for the new year, and personally, I think I am due for a better year in 2026; the past five years, basically since COVID-19, have been dreadful.

My personal hopes include beginning to repair family relationships and friendships. To make music that is worthy of making money, both performances and compositions. To spend my remaining time with activities of wholesome goodness. Also with this, talking about better things than some of the garbage that’s out there.

For our world, I hope for sustained peace deals. I hope for a healthier political climate. I hope for better general behaviors. I hope for improved conditions for our inner cities. I hope to end the hatred out there with love and charity. And generally, serious movements to really end violence. And frankly, for people to cheer up. I would also hope these ideas are more than just nice wishes, but something that we all can really begin. If not now, when?

Still, finally, I hope things are laid out for not just things becoming nicer, but some really amazing things, e.g., space exploration, cures for cancer and, with me as a musician, global melting pot super-orchestras!

— Benjamin Amenta, Flossmoor

Remember we can heal

It is my hope that 2026 will bring hope. Not just for me and the ones I love, but for all of us who hope for something greater than our individual achievements. We live in a time when social media platforms too often magnify division instead of connection, when artificial intelligence replaces human thought and relationships, and when politics aim to push humanity toward a type of aggression most of us have never experienced in our lifetimes. As I look ahead to the new year, it’s often hard to feel hopeful when it feels as if we are standing on the brink of self-destruction.

Yet my hope is that, even in this fractured society, we remember we can heal. We can refocus on our collective responsibility to one another, choose empathy, choose thoughtfulness and embrace each other with warmth over all the forces that try to reduce us to rubble.

— Dana Turner, Chicago

Embrace humanness

The new year may be the time to stop and take stock of what is really important. We are all born human, but being human is a risk. Are we capable of being human in the new year? We are human, and it starts inside of us all.

When we accept our human side, we accept loving ourselves, and then we love others. May the new year help us learn to be human.

— Sandra Perryman, Oakbrook Terrace

Rediscover commonality

I wish for long-ago dreams to come to fruition, hopes for the world, hopes for our land, hopes for continued health to pursue the never-ending desire to create and connect.

Hopes for family: The primal need to protect and love the ones dearest to us, to dream with and for them, to keep giving them safe haven, and to pray the following year will be one of growth and joy.

Hopes for citizens: May caring voices prevail; may we bring back compassion and concern for others ahead of self-interest. May we look around and understand we are a part of one shared planet, of which we are all stewards.

Hopes for faith: May we rediscover the commonality of people all around us and make friends, not enemies, by acting on our own best instincts.

— Joanne Hoffman, Highland Park

My hope versus reality

My hope for the new year is a return to civility and for a nation where people can discuss opposing viewpoints without angry rhetoric and repeated lies, one that accepts all people regardless of race, religion, sexuality or income. But my hope for 2026 is the same hope people have had for centuries that is still unfulfilled today. So although I continue to be hopeful, I am unfortunately realistic enough to realize that in 2026 or in the years I have left on this earth, my hopes will remain hopes and not reality.

How sad that we continue to hate, to demonize and to be willing to go to war than make the effort to achieve acceptance and understanding. And since that hate continues and we don’t address mental health and gun control, nothing will be solved.

— Joy Orlowsky, Northbrook

Seeing the bigger picture

Before I even noticed the editor’s appeal for letters expressing readers’ hopes for the new year, I had planned to send in a response to Jodi Bondi Norgaard’s compelling piece “When silence becomes a green light for normalizing cruelty” (Dec. 21). It has now occurred to me that my hopes for 2026 tie in perfectly with Norgaard’s message.

Basically, I pray that Americans heed the author’s dire warning. That silence in the face of hateful speech — especially that of our leaders — coupled with inaction in response to the terrible cruelty we are witnessing daily from our government, most evident in the treatment of immigrants, the LGBTQ community, the disabled and others, is fast-changing our American culture for the worse. It is more than alarming to see people’s tolerance grow for objectionable speech, behavior that causes harm and egregious government policy that in the past would have stirred widespread protest and/or outrage.

True, via the “No Kings” rallies, millions did make an effort to stand up to injustice and the slide toward fascism. But the awareness of the crisis is not as widespread as it needs to be.

Many of us are so wrapped up in the challenges of managing our daily lives that we fail to see the bigger picture — the serious threat represented by a culture at risk of moral disintegration. A civil society that is no longer “civil” in its interactions. A system of government being dismantled at breakneck pace as the people in power thumb their noses at constitutional constraints. Officials and legislators afraid to voice opposition, unwilling to sacrifice their own political careers to do the right thing.

Above all, a leader driven exclusively by his own narcissism, an unquenchable quest for power and an overriding sense of grievance, with no regard for “the public good.”

Even regular citizens like me may understandably hesitate to stick our necks out.

Too often, we are so overcome by the barrage of negative events that we think it necessary, for our own sanity, to tune out. Norgaard cautions us, however, that the consequences of such “silence” will be dire. We must gird ourselves to jump back into the fray. If not, we will wake up one day and realize we are at the point of no return, that our society is no longer recognizable as the America we knew and cherished — and it will be too late to get it back.

— Janet Garcia, Highland Park

May organizations survive

My hope for the new year is that places such as Misericordia, the Ray Graham Association and the Bethshan Association can manage to stay financially solvent in 2026. They provide much needed services for people with profound physical and developmental disabilities.

With so many cuts from the federal government, it will be a challenging task! These institutions deserve all the support we can give them.

Happy New Year!

— Genie Urick, Elmhurst

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/12/31/letters-123125-hopes-new-year/