Some lessons on hope for 2025: ‘I believe that people matter.’

As a journalist, I often interview people who are doing big things to make the world better. The work they do requires optimism, so I usually end our conversations by asking them how they maintain their sense of hope.

The question feels timely these days.

I find myself thinking about these conversations as one year closes and another begins. It’s a transition that seems to call all of us to a renewed sense of purpose.

For a magazine piece last summer, I interviewed Jermaine Myrie, who heads MENTOR, a Boston-based national nonprofit that connects young people with adults who can help them develop skills and thrive. Myrie’s nonprofit has had some success, but he noted that many young people, especially those in poor and rural areas, still lack mentors. I wondered what kept Myrie going.

“I believe that people matter,” he told me. “At the heart of mentorship are people caring for people.”

It was a simple truth, but maybe one worth remembering in a culture that too often throws our basic humanity into the background.

For another article last fall, I spoke with Eboo Patel, who runs a nonprofit called Interfaith America, which tries to build bridges among people of all faiths. Patel recalled being a poor and lonely graduate student who knew how to make only one dish, his mother’s masala potatoes.

Patel offered to prepare some for a handful of friends, asking that they bring a dish of their own. Their connection proved so meaningful that the idea grew, their potluck eventually becoming a community event that fed multitudes over two decades.

“I just think I am given to hope. I am wired for hope,” Patel said. “Would you rather live now, or in some other century?”

Last October, I spoke with historian Jon Meacham about his recognition with a National Humanities Medal at the White House. Our talk pointed me back to “The Soul of America,” Meacham’s 2018 book about the nation’s highest ideals.

Meacham introduces the book with an eloquent argument for hope as an agent of progress: “Fear is about limits; hope is about growth. Fear casts its eyes warily, even shiftily, across the landscape; hope looks forward, to the horizon. Fear points at others, assigning blame; hope points ahead, working for a common good. Fear pushes away; hope pulls others closer. Fear divides; hope unifies.”

For an upcoming story, I closed last year by connecting with travel writer and spiritual thinker Pico Iyer. He cited many reasons for hope, including his sense that the students he has met are smarter and more engaged than he was at their age.

When Iyer visited New York recently, a cabdriver “drove halfway across the city to return the credit card I’d left in his car,” he added.

Listening to words like that, I felt more hopeful. Here’s hoping you will, too.

Email Danny Heitman at danny@dannyheitman.com.