By Chris Gambian

Is it too late to wish you a happy new year?

I’m writing this on a day in Sydney where temperatures are set to rise to 42 degrees. It’s already hot, muggy and a little disorienting.

I think the world has felt a bit hot, muggy and disorienting of late. News at home and overseas — regardless of where you stand on the issues — has, I suspect, left many of us feeling a bit down, a little lost and maybe a bit hopeless.

So things should change, right?

But change is hard, even when it is change for the better. Sometimes even the smallest change can feel like a brave act. The big changes we need to create the world we want can feel too hard, too risky or both.

Even when the status quo is doing us harm, failing to meet our needs, or holding us back from living our best, fullest lives, there is comfort and stability it brings that can feel irresistible. 

“We’ve always done it this way” we tell ourselves as a consolation.

Sometimes the sparks of hope hide themselves. Sometimes the better that change can bring is far too hard to see.

So what do we do?

Perhaps we shrug shoulders and accept that nothing much can be done.

Perhaps we squint our eyes and try to find hope in what’s not working, just to keep things as they are.

But as the saying goes, if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.

I believe that sometimes hope can shine through.  Yes, it might take a leap of faith in troubled times, but the world we imagine for ourselves can be our North Star and we can bravely set about to make it.

So this new year, I’m going to put my hope in our ability to shape our world as it should be. 

Hope in justice. Hope in people. Hope in love.

We have to do it together.  We have to be brave for each other.  But despite the odds, we can make our hopes for something better more than dreams: we can make a new reality.

Happy new year!

To organise an interview with Australians for Mental Health CEO, Chris Gambian, please contact us at [email protected]

About Australians for Mental Health: 

Australians for Mental Health was founded in 2014 to campaign for fundamental change in the way the country thinks and acts about mental health. Our mission is to ensure that Australia starts putting mental health at the heart of our national life.