What I Want For You In 2026
It’s been a while since I’ve had the bandwidth to put wishes out into the world like I did in 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018, but here we are, at the cusp of a new year, and I’ve found myself drawn back to this tradition.
What I want for you in the coming year is enough.
That’s not quite so simple as it sounds, of course.
If you don’t know what enough is
For some of you, just identifying what enough means can be a monumental task, especially in the face of a relentless campaign coming from all sides to convince you that what you really need is more.
What I want for you in 2026 is to develop the ability to look critically (and compassionately) at your life and community and identify what you need to be safe and satisfied. To think hard about how you spend your time and energy, and to ask yourself if what you do lines up with what you need.
If you need help getting started, maybe one of these will be useful:
A Financial Planner’s Guide to Defining ‘Enough’ by Ben Mayhew
No Regret Decisions and Worry Free Money by Shannon Lee Simmons
If enough is out of reach
For too many of you (and more every day) identifying enough isn’t the problem; accessing it is. We’re living through yet another chapter of imposed austerity on the many who don’t have much so that the few who already have more than they can ever use can continue to hoard abundance for themselves.
For you, I’m done wishing. It’s time for those who have enough to take action, to be an unignorable nuisance to those with the power to make decisions and the pockets to fund them. It’s time to build up resilient and interdependent communities of neighbours and start or participate in delivering direct support.
Quite frankly, it’s time to be angry that people live and die in artificially sustained poverty when only 30% of current global resource and energy use could provide enough to every. single. person. on the planet.
If you have more than enough
What I want for you this year is to experience the joy of using your tremendous social, cultural, and economic power to change the world into one where the baseline expectation is that everyone has enough.
This is going to require cultivating a relationship to wealth that’s defined by community and collective thriving instead of individual or family benefit.
It will take intestinal fortitude, and it will be the best thing you’ve ever done.