There are about 8.2 billion people in the world, each with their own hopes for the coming year. So as I did for my turn-of-the-year letters last year and the year before, I asked a variety of peoplefc188, from many walks of life and parts of the world, about what they were looking forward to. Here’s what 15 of them had to say (quotes are excerpted from emails unless otherwise noted):

Dr. Ananda Bandyopadhyay, the deputy director of polio eradication at the Gates Foundation:

My hope for 2025 is that all children, especially those living in the hardest-to-reach communities, can grow up protected from vaccine-preventable disease like polio and measles. Because it’s in the absence of disease that everything else is allowed to flourish, and where all lives have equal value.

Walter Lawrence, of Woodlawn, the Bronx, a security guard (interview):

Robinson’s history of comments that have been widely criticized as antisemitic and anti-gay made him a deeply polarizing figure in North Carolina long before his bid for governor was upended last week by a CNN report that he had called himself a “Black NAZI” and praised slavery while posting on a pornographic website between 2008 and 2012. Now, some of his allies are abandoning him. Most of his senior campaign staff members have resigned. The Republican Governors Association said that its pro-Robinson ads would expire tomorrow and that no new ones had been placed. And former President Donald Trump, who endorsed Robinson in the spring, calling him “Martin Luther King on steroids,” did not mention him once during his rally in the state over the weekend.

Mr. Biden even held on to hope for the transformative peace deal for the Middle East that he thought was within grasp a year ago, believing it could survive even as the war between Hamas and Israel tore at its foundations.

I hope my wife gets better. I hope I can retire. My mother is 92. I hope she lives to 100.

Colson Whitehead, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author:

I have no hopes for 2025. Humanity is disappointing. We killed the Earth. Villains triumph and the innocents suffer. I imagine these trends will continue.

Keyu Jin, an associate professor of economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science:

For 2025, it would be a blessing if major governments embraced economic pragmatism over ideological or self-serving political agendas that inflate the egos of politicians but harm the people they serve. May 2025 mark China’s adoption of a decisive, whatever-it-takes approach to rejuvenate its economy. Finally, let us hope that the United States and China find common ground to prioritize addressing their internal challenges, rather than fixating on undermining one another.

Jhovanny Irazabal, a 26-year-old refugee from Venezuela living in New York City (interview, translated from Spanish):

I want to buy a car. I hope my country escapes dictatorship. This is the year of change.

Douglas Hofstadter, a computer scientist at Indiana University in Bloomington and an author:

I hope somehow to regain some measure of hope in this, the most ominous-seeming year that I have yet faced. Over this past year, and especially these last few months, I have lost much of my once-strong faith in humanity, but I hope, somehow, to regain at least a little bit of it in 2025. How, I certainly don’t know, but hope springs eternal.

Tímea Füzi, 25, a Hungarian studying film in New York:

In 2025, I hope people embrace being messy, spontaneous and free. I hope they care less about looks and what others think of them. More important, I hope people appreciate themselves as they are.

Dmitry Dolgin, the chief Russia economist of ING, a bank based in Amsterdam:

In Russia, my home country, the state needs to start acting less like a corporation maximizing value for a select few shareholders and more like an institution designed to serve the interests of a broader community. And for myself, I just hope to be able to return home one day.

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