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This year, forget about the need to make New Year's resolutions. The average beleaguered Canadian, with house prices tumbling, dividends dwindling and a credit crunch coming, does not need to add arduous self-improvement to the list of what to fret about right now. So go to the gym or don't. Just go easy on yourself. Aim for a larger, more soothing perspective.

How about hope? In the wake of the success of U.S. president-elect Barack Obama, hope has recently become the new hip, as one Toronto weekly publication put it. I'm not sure cynicism has entirely been kicked to the curb, but abashed (as opposed to unabashed, that's too ebullient) optimism, despite what we're facing, is slowly catching on.

After all, what choice do we have?

Yet it's difficult to write about hope and not sound treacly or clichéd. If I hear one more tired rip-off of Mr. Obama's hope-filled "yes we can" mantra, I will defiantly cling to the dark side. The latest was a discount designer clothing establishment in Toronto named Tom's Place, which rhetorically and relentlessly asked radio listeners if it could sell Hugo Boss or whatever at a steep discount: "Yes we can!"

Please marketers, leave that transformational slogan a shred of dignity.

As I made the social rounds this season, it occurred to me that hope is not just, as the poet Emily Dickinson famously and enigmatically wrote, "the thing with feathers," it is exactly the thing that everyone needs. Hope leads to resilience. How else do you arm yourself for those inevitable personal ups and downs, a brutal financial year ahead and the vagaries of global politics?

At various parties I heard sometimes cynical friends expressing a deep need to believe that the coming year would turn out better than key indicators were predicting. I heard worried older people whose personal wealth has been cut in half and who may not have time to wait out the economic crisis tentatively ask others, "So, what do you think is going to happen?" You could see they desperately wanted an upbeat answer.

But no one knows the answer. Back before the turn of the 21st century, futurist Faith Popcorn predicted the shattering of icons and the disintegration of our belief in experts. Ladies and gentlemen, we are there. Does anyone actually believe any economist's explanation for what has happened, let alone a prediction for the future?

And yet, at the same time that people have lost faith in those who run the economy, they've been engaged worldwide by the promise of Mr. Obama's new administration. "There's never been more cause for hope than knowing he's going to be in power," one party guest said.

One thing Mr. Obama clearly brings to the table is a calm demeanour. How attractive. In 2009, the calm shall inherit the Earth. I will value the folks who don't panic, I think, over all who do. Panic is a luxury that no one can now afford. Furthermore, panic is contagious, so if I were to resolve anything, I would vow to stay away from the Chicken Little set. My sky is not falling (and even if it does, I will hold it up till my arms fall off).

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, not often the most inspirational of speakers, delivered a stirring call to arms at a year-end media conference, challenging us all to get a little more backbone in place to face the future. Are we going to be the first generation, he asked, to not make it through a global crisis and leave the world a better place for our children? Of course not. "Yes we can!" (Okay, he didn't say that.)

As for the twentysomething generation, those who are in the job market or just about to be, I find them suddenly refreshingly pragmatic about their lives and their future, not thinking, as older generations likely are, in terms of universal grimness or economic catastrophe. Their cellphones keep ringing, their plans keep changing, but now they have permission to not be a star-studded success right out of the gate - in times like these, society will applaud them for just becoming economically self-sufficient. Universally lowered expectations can be a good thing.

So hope it is. With a side order of realism: This new year, despite its obvious challenges, I hope that we have a great year. I hope my friends and family stay healthy, or claw their way back to health. I hope prosperity returns to my business and to all the businesses clinging by a thin thread. And I fervently hope our political leaders do the right thing.

I even hope I go to the gym once or twice.