As the year turns, I keep noticing how heavy everything feels, and how little space we leave ourselves for imagining and creating a better future.
People are tired. Not just physically tired, but drained in a deeper way. Depressed. Angry. Resigned. And while all of that is understandable, I am starting to think it is also dangerous.
Depression saps energy. It kills creativity. And when creativity disappears, so does the ability to imagine anything better than what we already have. When everything feels dark, there is almost nothing left to fight for.
I was watching a recent Bill Gates special on Netflix where he spoke to young activists and said something that stuck with me. He talked about the need for optimism. Not the shallow, everything-will-work-out kind. The kind that insists the future is still worth shaping. I agreed with him because, without some form of optimism, action collapses.
And right now, action is collapsing.
Why Creating a Better Future Feels Out of Reach Right Now
We are living through a long, steady shift of wealth moving upward. People who are not wealthy are struggling, and governments that claim to be “for the people” continue to work in ways that clearly favour wealthy people. That betrayal is real. People see it in their rent, their grocery bills, their medical stress, and their sense that no one is listening.
At the same time, we are flooded with warnings. Climate collapse. Impending war. Political leaders openly waging war on their own citizens. The message, repeated over and over, is that things are falling apart and there is nothing we can do about it.
That message has consequences. People are angry and divided.
Angry people are not powerful people. Exhausted people are not strategic people. When anger turns into permanent rage or resignation, people stop organizing, stop imagining, and stop believing that collective action can work. That vacuum is not neutral. It benefits those who already hold power. Our divisions give them strength.
How Despair Undermines Creating a Better Future
Over time, this depressed emotional state starts to feel normal. We accept it so we can function. We hear the same urgent ‘crisis’ language over and over. Big problems get routed into national and international meetings, consultations, and working groups that produce reports but little visible change. We tell ourselves that this is just how the world works now, that corruption is inevitable, that nature will fix itself, and that social and environmental breakdown is something we are meant to adapt to rather than prevent.
These assumptions deserve to be challenged.
Yes, corruption exists. Yes, people with too much power tend to abuse it. But accepting it as immutable is not the same as acknowledging reality. It is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Anything that tells us we cannot make the world fairer, safer, or more humane is a belief that leads directly to failure.
We are also too quick to ignore who is actually driving the collapse. When destruction is framed as inevitable, responsibility disappears. Collapse is no longer seen as a consequence of policy and power, but as an unavoidable condition we are expected to live with. That framing lets powerful actors hide in plain sight.
At the same time, I do not believe in fairy tales. People can fail. Systems can break. Nature can be pushed past recovery. Evil exists. And, naming that matters. Pretending otherwise leaves us unprepared.
Creating a Better Future Requires Imagination, Not Certainty
But here is the part I think we are missing.
Creating a better future is an act of creativity.
Creativity is not just art. It is how goals get imagined. It is how alternatives are conceived. It is how people move from “this is unbearable” to “this is what we want instead.” Without that step, there is nothing to organize around, nothing to demand, nothing to build.
History is full of moments where people acted without guarantees. Not because success was assured, but because inaction guaranteed decline. Those stories are rarely neat. They involve fragile wins, partial victories, cooperation under pressure, and constant defense of gains. We do not tell those stories enough.
Popular culture has shown us this too. Star Trek did not predict the future. It invited a generation to practice thinking forward. It imagined technologies that did not yet exist, modelled cooperation across differences, and treated shared survival as a project worth committing to. That kind of thinking is not escapism. It is a rehearsal.
Choosing to Participate in Creating a Better Future
We need more of that now. Not blind hope, but deliberate imagination. We need to define what “better” actually looks like, and then take stock of which tools we have or are building that enable us to move toward it. Organizing. Science. Policy. Mutual aid. Regulation. Solidarity. None of these works if we cannot picture the outcome they are meant to serve.
This is the part that is hardest to sit with. Imagining a better future does not protect us from disappointment. It does not guarantee success. It requires vulnerability. It asks us to care in a world that has given us plenty of reasons not to. But opting out of imagination is not a form of realism. It is a quiet surrender. And surrender does not keep us safe. It only preserves the conditions we are already struggling under.
If you are feeling battered, it is rational to want to retreat. Self preservation makes sense. But there is nowhere to run to. We are not isolated individuals facing this alone. We are part of the conditions that produced this moment, which means we are also part of whatever comes next.
That is where choice re enters the picture.
As we begin a new year, I am not insisting that good things are guaranteed. I am saying that refusing to imagine them guarantees they will not happen. Creating a better future begins with the decision to see it as possible. And that is a decision I am absolutely willing to make.
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