A new year is supposed to bring with it a spirit of hope for the future. That famous countdown and ball dropping is a time to set goals for improvement, to make positive changes and embrace new experiences. That’s what the energy at New York City’s Times Square is all about each Dec. 31, as people crowd together in the cold to commemorate what was and join each other in celebrating the possibilities of a new year.

Ideally, we would all carry that energy with us into the new year, but for most of us, it dulls once January gets under way, with its piles of snow, bitter cold and power outages. But it’s worth trying to hold onto even just one thing, just one resolution. It might be a decision to improve your health, your education or your attitude, or it could be making a point of accomplishing a specific goal, from something as grand as the trip of a lifetime to as simple as decluttering your junk drawer.

The new year is when we collectively pause, as a nation, and look at where we are and where we want to be. On a personal level, most of us can make peace with our past and our goals for the future, but recent surveys show that Americans are not finding much hope for the nation as a whole in 2014. A recent Associated Press poll showed a very negative national mood, with only 34 percent of us saying that the nation is heading in the right direction. While much of that opinion is tied up in politics, with Republicans showing far lower numbers than Democrats during a Democratic presidency, it’s a disconcerting figure just the same.

Are we really on the wrong track, America? Is there no hope to be had?

We don’t think so, and it’s worth noting that we all seem to focus on the negative a lot more easily than we do on the positives, which further skews our opinions. Yes, it’s true that sometimes the world can seem to be on the wrong path: the economy is struggling, the health care law rollout is a mess on many different fronts, unexplainable violence regularly claims innocent lives, and governmental officials have disappointed with the gridlock their partisanship has created.

All of these are evolving issues, however, and arguably, all are on track to improve in 2014, with the health care law website being fixed and its mandates hashed out in the court of law; security measures and mental health care efforts improving after senseless killings; and, hopefully, a Congress that has learned from its mistakes. Even the abuses of public trust revealed this past year by Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers, while frightening and discouraging, are at least now in the light, and 2014 will be the time to refocus our efforts to ensure the Constitution is respected and followed.

As we head into this new year, we urge our readers to hold on to hope for a better future, no matter what the polls say. Without it, there is no drive to act upon all we learned in 2013.