Happy New Year 2026 From Ear Worthy: Hope For A Better World

 It's amazing what the prospect of a new year may bring. Suddenly, a night with a large Doritos bag and your favorite streaming channel gives way to a return to the fitness center, where your money has gone unrequited for the last year. 

It's a new year. "This year, things will be different." 

We've said that before with little or no results, but this year...

It's become a trope that people will exercise, diet, and put forward their best self in the new year. 

Conventional wisdom says that failure is imminent. Goodbye, bench presses, hello Philly Cheesesteak. Yet, using the new year as a life reset has a long tradition.

People started making New Year's resolutions over 4,000 years ago with the ancient Babylonians, who made promises to their gods during the 12-day Akitu festival (marking the new year around mid-March) to repay debts and return borrowed items for good fortune. For context, I have followed that ancient Babylonian practice, returning my neighbor's snow shovel the other day. 

The tradition evolved with the Romans, who set resolutions for good behavior, and continued through the Middle Ages with knights renewing chivalrous vows, eventually becoming the secular practice we know today. 

The most common New Year's resolutions revolve around health (exercise, diet, weight loss), finances (saving money, paying debt), and self-improvement (learning new skills, getting organized), with a recent focus also growing on mental wellness and spending quality time with loved ones, often stemming from a desire for a better balance and overall well-being. 

That's all well and good, but I suggest a different path for resolutions this year. Instead of working on ourselves, let's work on our relationship to others in the community. We need to be kinder to one another. We aren't two countries, we're one. And, despite what Fox News claims in its angry, vitriolic rhetoric, we aren't that much different from one another. 

Of course, it doesn't help when the U.S. president releases middle-of-the-night hateful screeds about everything from Joe Biden (Everything is his fault!) to the tragic death of a beloved and talented director, Rob Reiner. Is it that easy to get people to hate other Americans? 

My theory is this: "Nobody tells me who to hate." I'm always amazed when speaking to people who watch these news networks incessantly, how angry, enraged and full of misdirected wrath they are. Was that hate already there, and the network tapped a vein of resentment and disgust?  

In 2026, instead of losing a few notches on the old belt buckle, maybe we can find a way to co-exist with one another. 

Let's look at one man who's flipping the script on America. It's Texas state lawmaker James Talarico. For Talarico, religion is his foundation, and he’s putting his Christian faith at the forefront of his pitch, citing it as the basis of his policy goals, political aspirations and an outlook that frames politics not as “left versus right, but top versus bottom.”

Talarico has drawn millions of views on sermons that lay out his progressive reading of the Bible, including one from July where he questions what Jesus would do “about a tax system that benefits the rich over the poor” and “a health care system that forces the sick to start GoFundMe pages to afford lifesaving surgeries.”  

Regardless of your belief system, history has recorded that Jesus's teachings emphasized forgiveness, treating our neighbors as we would want to be treated, being merciful, being humble, and serving others over material wealth. What politician is teaching that? 

For all those who insist that the U.S. is a Christian nation, I ask you: Whose version of Christianity? What's needed is a kinder, gentler version where those who have, assist those who don't have, and mercy, forgiveness, and charity for all direct our actions. The ninth Beatitude uttered by Jesus at the Sermon on the Mount goes, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the Sons of God."

In 2026, we need fewer sons of bitches, and more Sons of God, whoever your God may be. 

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For more podcast reporting, check out Ear Worthy on Forbes magazine.

Frank Racioppi’s Books (fiction & nonfiction) can be found here.