This is NHPR’s The Big Question. We ask you a question about life in New Hampshire, you submit an answer, and we feature your voices on air and online.
It’s time to welcome a new year. As we trade in 2025 for the year ahead, we want to know what your hopes are for the future.
For December’s Big Question, we asked: What do you hope this next year brings?
Here’s what some of you said.
Mary - Monroe, NH: I hope that this year brings continued good health to my family and friends and our rescue pets. I also hope to continue my — amazing to me — streak of strength. I was able to do 70 regular push ups this year recently, and it blew my mind. Two sets of 20, two sets of 15. That's 70. Next year I'm hoping to get there with pull ups. I'm 65, so this feels unbelievably great. And so I'm hoping for good strength for me.
Russell - Peterborough, NH: I worked for the state as state curator for 15 years, ending in 2009. And what I've seen over time is that the traditional value of depending on the property tax for expenses is not enough. We have to do more. The dilemma we're in is that we can't afford to educate our kids, and we can't afford to keep the university going. So we have to get out of the box that we're in and forget about the oath that we made a long time ago in the 50s to never have more taxes. So get aware, New Hampshire. We've got to do something and we all know it. We cannot have an uneducated group of youngsters or people who are leaving the state because they can't get a good education.
Lynn - Sanbornton, NH: What I hope for next year… My first point is, I wish for a ginormous turnout of young, savvy voters in our 2026 midterm elections. My other point: that our university and college and community college systems not just be returned to pre-Trump normal, but act on what is best for the goals of educating [and] understanding, by outreach, the points of view that exist. Education should include exposure to ideas of the middle and of both extremes. No books should be censored [or] banished based on viewpoints in the books. So both of my two wishes that I express here have to do with our young, I think partly because now I'm also a great grandmother, which really puts pressure on to feel like we want the future to be a good one for them.
