Deborah Levy: ‘It is hopeful that language can be taken apart and put back together’

It is hopeful when kids make up a language no one but their pals can understand. It’s experimental, witty, a bit mad – which is a good thing. At least the children of our nation have made a collective innovation.

Yes, it is hopeful that language can be taken apart and put together in a different shape. This is something that can be practised at home.

It is hopeful that the language of patriarchy, currently having its last gasp at destroying the Earth, has been unmasked by the global feminist movement, which has given everyone another sort of language. On some intuitive level, we all know that the personal is political.

When men get their kicks from insulting female schoolchildren for giving us the correct climate science, we understand that their own women and children are not in safe hands. It is truly hopeful that more people in the world know this than don’t know this.
The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy is published by Hamish Hamilton

Crystal Rasmussen: ‘I hope we can be kinder to each other’

Hope for many marginalised people is a means of survival, a way of imagining that tomorrow might be better so you don’t give up on today. I hope in the next decade that we see the NHS restored, nourished, and valued. I hope we see an end to Tory rule and creeping nationalism, both here and elsewhere. I hope the spate of media-led transphobia ends. I hope Samantha Mumba’s new music is brilliant. I hope we can be kinder to each other as the world starts to change in ways we don’t understand. I hope I can give up smoking, or that they discover it’s good for you.
Crystal Rasmussen’s Diary of a Drag Queen is published by Ebury.

Hilary Benn: ‘Halting dangerous climate change is achievable’

It was 51 years ago, on Christmas Eve, that we saw that first photograph taken by the Apollo astronauts of our Earth in all its splendour floating in the eternity of space. At that moment, we really understood what our interdependence means. My hope is that as humankind we not only recognise that the fight to prevent dangerous climate change is urgent, but also that it is achievable, if we put our minds to it. To do this, however, we must put to one side the politics of division and learn to work together better.
Hilary Benn is a Labour politician

Ore Ogunbiyi: ‘I want to see more black women at the top’

We are living in a world suffering from the consequences of climate change, and rife with racism and sexism that seem too deeply embedded to be overthrown. It is hard to be optimistic about anything. Hope is what you do in spite of that. To remain optimistic about a world that feels crippled with despair is in itself radical. So hope, to me, is optimism. Radical optimism.

My hope is that I get to see more black women at the top. It’s no fun celebrating “firsts” if you’re the first and only. I hope more of us find new ways to break down institutional barriers that have kept us out of the spaces where we rightfully belong.
Ore Ogunbiyi is the co-author of Taking Up Space: The Black Girl’s Manifesto for Change, published by #Merky Books

Luciana Berger: ‘We must do more than hope: we must act’

People driven by progressive values are motivated by the idea of hope. We believe that we are not flotsam on an ocean of immovable forces or unavoidable consequences, but that we can shape our destinies. Pretty much everything good in our world has been made by optimists, from the NHS to electric cars. And pessimists have always been there to drag us down.

I want my children to inherit a better world. I hope they don’t experience racism, or encounter people with hate in their hearts. I hope they don’t fear the climate crisis like we do, or see a world racked by poverty and conflict. For that to become true, we must do more than hope: we must also argue, organise and act to make it so.
Luciana Berger is a former MP

Minna Salami: ‘I hope we’ll turn to elevating our minds’

I hope we will use technology positively. I hope that the coming decade will be one where humanity reconnects to creativity, compassion and community, and moves away from the patriarchal and competitive mindset that is dulling society and causing suffering in people’s individual and collective lives. My hope is that we will become as invested in elevating our minds as we are in developing our technologies.
Minna Salami is the founder of the MsAfropolitan blog

Ahir Shah: ‘I want my blocked nose to go away’

I often think, when I have a cold and a blocked nose, “I am sure I used to be able to breathe freely.” I’ve spent a while now trying to work out what hope means to me, and all I can conclude is that, for what feels like the longest time, I have been a person with a blocked nose trying to remember what breathing feels like. I hope to hope again, to breathe again.
Ahir Shah’s standup show Dots is on UK tour until March

Carole Cadwalladr: ‘There will be a reckoning. Just not soon’

I’m pretty despairing much of the time. It is hard to keep going as a journalist at a time in which no one is ever held to account. But I do think the truth will out. Facebook is on the run. And while this generation of politicians is prepared to ignore the fact that we now know the EU referendum was a corrupt and illegitimate vote, the abject refusal to acknowledge this will horrify future generations. There will be a reckoning. Just not any time soon.
Carole Cadwalladr is an award-winning Guardian and Observer journalist

Elif Shafak: ‘I’m hoping we’ll rise up against toxic populism’

Too much optimism makes us too comfortable, if not complacent. Too much pessimism wears us down. We need a healthy dose of each. We need, in the words of Gramsci, the pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the will. Because we are facing massive global challenges – from the climate crisis to inequality, from extremism to the dark side of digital technology – none of which can be solved without global solidarity.

I am hoping humanity will rise against the tide of nationalism, tribalism, isolationism and toxic populism. May 2020 be the year of tackling inequality head-on, embarking on the net-zero-carbon target, promoting empathy, and may it be the year of citizens of humanity.
Elif Shafak’s How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division is published by Profile and Wellcome Collection in July 2020

Ed Gamble: ‘If the planet doesn’t melt, I can redo my kitchen’

As a comedian, hope is very important. I probably use the phrases “I hope this goes well” and “we can only hope” more than any others. Before I face a new audience, before I try out new material, before I record a television show. It’s a way of positively navigating the chaos of a life in entertainment without ever confronting what is essentially a mess of events that has no real order or sense. Other than that, it’s a laugh being a comic. I do like it, I swear. You can never truly know what an audience will be like (unless you are in Maidenhead, where they stare). You can only hope.

My hopes for the next decade are depressingly personal and probably not global enough, however ashamed I am to admit that. Sure, I hope that the planet doesn’t melt, but mainly so I can finally redo the kitchen. I think this is the angle Extinction Rebellion is missing. It is, rightly, speaking on a global level, but people can’t wrap their heads around that. We need less of “the forests are burning” and more of: “If you don’t start recycling, you, Steve Thompson, will never get to see Hamilton.” Personally, I have seen Hamilton, so my main hope for the next decade is a sequel.
Ed Gamble is live at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London, on 20 December

Azadeh Moaveni: ‘Hope is like the humbling part of loving someone’

Hope to me is a spiritual duty, however unfashionable that might sound, not unlike the humbling, laborious parts of loving someone. Persian poetry is replete with allusions to moments of dark political decline, where hope feels ignorant and almost outlandish. My hope is that I can infuse my daily life with higher purpose, that I can somehow impart a Persian worldview to my children, who I sometimes fear are citizens of nowhere, and that Iran, where by now you can tell I am from, comes out of its isolation and gets to occupy a few years of light.
Azadeh Moaveni’s Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of Isis was shortlisted for this year’s Baillie Gifford prize

Shoshana Zuboff: ‘Too many of us fall into numb passivity’

My hope is the resurrection of hope itself. After all, what is hope but the deepest conviction that the future can be better than the present? As technological power grows and democracy stumbles, too many of us fall into numb passivity. We trade hope for resignation and succumb to the propaganda of inevitability. But the present is never a good predictor of what may come. Hope thrives on the knowledge that we make the future. Each life is testament to this wild miracle. We begin. We falter. We begin again.
Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power is published by Profile

Natasha Devon: ‘Hope is about harnessing your anger for change’

A lot of people have told me they’ve stopped engaging with politics, current affairs or anything beyond their home and job this year, because it’s all too awful. I understand the sentiment, but I also think that’s how evil wins. Hope is the ability to sustain your anger and harness it to bring about change.

In a year’s time, I hope my workplace mental health campaign Where’s Your Head At? will have succeeded in changing the law. We’re lobbying for provision of mental health first aid to be mandatory in workplaces in the same way as its physical counterpart. So far, all the politicians we have discussed it with have thought it was a great idea, but there have been so many changes of cabinet, and everyone has been so consumed with Brexit, we haven’t been able to push it through.

I also hope next year will be the year we start to understand that our mental health affects cognitive ability. Young people’s mental health has enjoyed greater prominence recently, but it’s always as an “add-on” to academic attainment – a ‘wellbeing week’ in the middle of an otherwise highly pressured term.
Yes You Can: Ace Your Exams Without Losing Your Mind by Natasha Devon is published by Macmillan in April

Judy Murray: ‘I hope to get the Murray Tennis Centre started’

Hope is wishful thinking. I hope my family stays happy and healthy and I also hope to press the button on the Murray Tennis Centre and start building what will be our family legacy for the sport in Scotland. For the new decade I hope to live
to see it up and running.
Judy Murray is a tennis coach and the mother of Jamie and Andy Murray

Chelsea Kwakye: ‘Dare yourself to imagine a different way of life’

Hope is essential to action and can be a driving force for change. Sometimes hoping can be overwhelming because, for a minute or two, you dare yourself to imagine a different way of life and what the future could look like. Above all, hope to me is the countless people and voices, often on the periphery of society, who are leading with their selflessness, knowledge and compassion.

In the new decade I hope to see accountability, from politicians to CEOs, meaningful change and transparency. On a personal level, my hopes are quite simple: good health for all my loved ones, staying mentally and physically healthy and continuing to learn from those around me.
Chelsea Kwakye is the co-author of Taking Up Space: The Black Girl’s Manifesto for Change, published by #Merky Books

Peter Pomerantsev: ‘I aim for a shrug of doomed optimism’

There’s something desperate about hope that I want to avoid. It reminds me too much of its own necessity. Let’s be honest, it’s not been a great year for some of the things I cherish, for the woolly cosmopolitan liberalism I’ve always worn as a warm jumper. But the opposite of hope, cynicism, I want to avoid, too, comforting as it is. In times like these I turn to something eastern European inside me: a shrug of doomed optimism. In my birth country of Ukraine I’ve learnt to love that shrug: it expects nothing good will happen, but knows things could be a lot worse, and that we might as well give it a go anyway. It’s much more resilient than hope. So for the future: less hope – more doomed optimism.
Peter Pomerantsev’s This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality is published by Faber