Gratitude : Counterweights

Lately, I have been thinking about what helps us carry the weight of our lives.

There is always something to carry, isn’t there?

There are worries about the people we love. There are difficult seasons that leave traces behind, even after they have passed. And then there is the wider world—the suffering, cruelty and injustice that can make it difficult to know where to place our hope.

For a long time, I have believed in gratitude. I have kept gratitude journals and written about ordinary gifts. But lately, I have been wondering whether gratitude is something more than simply counting our blessings.

I have been reading Shannan Martin’s Counterweights: An Essential Practice for Holding Hope in a Heavy World, and the idea of a counterweight has stayed with me.

A counterweight doesn’t remove the weight.

It doesn’t pretend the load isn’t heavy.

It simply gives us something to hold on the other side.

That feels like a more honest way of thinking about gratitude.

The ordinary things that hold me

Today, I began by thinking about the ordinary things I am grateful for.

My morning tea.

Books.

My favourite chair.

Lucky.

The familiar routines of home.

They are such ordinary parts of my life that I could easily move through them without really seeing them.

Take my morning tea. It is more than just tea.

It is warmth in my hands and a quiet beginning to the day. Before the lists, the news and everything that needs doing, there is a moment to simply sit and gather myself.

The older I get, the more I realise that a life is held together by repetition—the things we do again and again, the places where we sit, the small rituals that say, You are here. Pay attention.

And then there is Lucky.

The walks, the companionship, the uncomplicated joy of being together. Lucky doesn’t care about my unfinished work or whether I have figured out what comes next. There is something wonderfully grounding about that.

A chair full of memories

Of all these ordinary gifts, I keep returning to my favourite chair.

It belonged in my paternal grandparents’ home and later became my mother’s favourite chair. Now it is mine.

I sit there to read and reflect. Sometimes I simply sit.

But it is not only a chair.

It is memory.

When I sit there, I think about the people who sat there before me and about all the ordinary moments that were never recorded because, at the time, they probably seemed insignificant.

I wonder sometimes whether objects carry something of the lives that have surrounded them.

I don’t know. But I do know that when I sit in that chair, I feel connected to the people I have loved.

It reminds me that I belong to a story that began before me.

That love leaves traces.

Perhaps that is one of my counterweights.

The moments I want to remember

Writing and journaling have taught me that we don’t always know which moments will matter until later.

The big events announce themselves. We know we are supposed to remember them.

But a quiet morning? A conversation? A dog lying nearby while we read?

Those moments can disappear unless we catch them.

And increasingly, I want to remember what my life actually feels like.

Sitting in my mother’s favourite chair with a book in my hand.

Walking Lucky.

Drinking tea in the early morning.

Writing when the house is quiet.

Talking with José.

Pausing long enough to realise that, for this moment at least, everything I need is here.

These are the moments I want to remember.

Because I think they are the moments from which a life is made.

This is heavy. And this is beautiful too.

There have been heavy things in my life.

For the past year or so, I have lived with the vigilance that comes with caring deeply for someone who has been unwell. José is better now, but sometimes my body has not quite received the message.

I still wake up.

Listen.

Check.

Difficult seasons can leave their traces long after the immediate danger has passed.

And there are the things happening in the wider world that weigh on me too. I care about justice, and I don’t want gratitude to become a way of looking away from suffering.

But I also know that I cannot survive by looking only at what is broken.

I need counterweights.

Perhaps the sentence I want to carry with me is this:

This is heavy. And this is beautiful too.

Not this is heavy, but…

Just both.

I am worried, and the morning light is beautiful.

The future is uncertain, and I am sitting in a chair that holds memories of people who loved me.

I am tired, and my tea is warm.

Both things are true.

My counterweights

My word for this year has been Rooted.

I chose it because I wanted to return, daily, to what matters.

And perhaps being rooted doesn’t mean being untouched by storms. Perhaps it means knowing where to return when life feels uncertain.

For me, those places of return are faith, writing, books, quiet, love, familiar routines and the simple act of paying attention.

Tea.

Lucky.

My chair.

Morning light.

José’s presence.

A good conversation.

The comfort of home.

These things don’t make the difficult things disappear.

But they help me remain human.

They help me remain soft.

And I think that matters.

So this month, as I explore gratefulness, I want to pay attention to my counterweights.

The things that help me carry what I cannot put down.

Not because they solve everything.

But because even in a heavy world, goodness is still here.

And perhaps we need to notice that goodness—not to escape reality, but to find the strength to remain in it.

To stay tender.

To keep showing up.

To remember what we love.

Today, I am grateful for the things that hold me.

For the small, ordinary gifts that don’t make the weight disappear but help me carry it.

Perhaps gratitude can be as simple as sitting in an old chair, holding a warm cup of tea, with Lucky somewhere nearby, and saying:

This is my life.

It is not perfect.

Some of it is very heavy.

And still, there is so much here to love.