Gratitude January 2026

December morning, Walkley, Sheffield

You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.
— Kahill Gibran, The Prophet, 1923

Good morning, and happy new year. Today is my birthday. I turn 67, which feels alarmingly close to 70. Age just happens, despite everything. Up until around 60, maybe even a little beyond, people would frequently say to me, "you don't look your age". That no longer happens. I look my age, and I am learning to embrace that. I have a duty to myself, and to our wider society to love, appreciate, and not be ashamed by the ageing process—and my own appearance. My lines tell a story, one that I actually began narrating right here, on a newsletter, back in 2023.1 Maybe one day I'll continue it. Not today though; today I shall consider all that I have been grateful for over the past year.

1. You I'll start here, now. I am grateful to you for reading this newsletter, and perhaps past newsletters of mine. I am especially grateful to those of you who send me the occasional note, relating to, or perhaps challenging what I write. Newsletters are essentially one-way communication: monologue. Having a missive expand into a conversation is always welcome gift. I encourage more of that in 2026. A personal response to a letter is an intimate, private conversation, and so very different to what we have become used to: public comments for all to see, loud announcements of who we are and what opinions we hold. When you write to someone privately no one else can see it, so there will be no likes, hearts, thumbs ups or comments. That feels weird maybe, but try it. Write a personal note of appreciation to someone (not necessarily me, I'm just seeding the idea). Write it and then let it go. Public comments imprison us. We are bound to return to the comment over and over again to see what traction we created, or what waves we made, forever asking, Who cares? Who loves me? Should I write more? A private note is a whisper into the wind. Much freer, much more beautiful.

2. Work I am grateful for the work I have. In the past I have complained about and found fault with a particular business partner, but it is that same partner who has kept up a steady flow of work to me over the past year. Without them my family would be in quite a dire position. It is true that the rate of pay has dropped considerably since I began partnering with them in 2022, but it is still a decent rate compared to many professions. More than gratitude for the work though, I have established a mutually respectful relationship with my liaison, Adhirsh, where kindness and consideration have taken the place of impatience and irritation. I must admit that kindness does not always come naturally to me; I am prone to impatience, annoyance, and too quickly seek to judge or blame. I have to consciously work at being otherwise—hence my word-of-the-year choice,2 which I'll reveal later.

3. Family First and foremost I am grateful to my beautiful wife, Rayna, who last year became blond, and then a fiery red which looks wonderful with her green eyes. I know it sounds corny, but Rayna really is my rock, a constant force of deep, abiding love that sees me through some dark times. We struggle sometimes, not always living up to the high parental ideals we set ourselves, and individually we each have difficulty focussing, following through, managing our various negative habits and behaviours effectively, or sometimes even at all, but through our difficult times I know that forgiveness, reframe and reconciliation are close at hand. We've been together fourteen years now, surviving the first two seven-year-itch moments with ease, our love and companionship growing year by year. And growing not only as a couple but as a family, with our beautiful daughters, Asrai and Zoë, who reaching the ages of 13 and 11 this year are truly becoming their own people. I have found that when I take the time to really listen to them, voice and action, words and behaviours, I can learn a great deal about myself, and about us all as a collective. Watching them grow and become is a never-ending source of joy that Rayna and I share. I'm grateful for the ongoing connection with my two sons, Ty and Finn, both living in the USA, and especially observing Ty, Asrai and Zoë build their sibling relationship over WhatsApp video. And finally, I'm grateful for my sister Juliette, for her love, friendship and above all her constancy. After our younger sister Emily died in 2022 the two of us have grown closer, consciously, deliberately. It is Juliette more than me who ensures we keep this bond strong, and the more we do so the deeper my appreciation grows. It's just the two of us now, from our birth family, so vital we stay strong together, sharing and strengthening our memories.

4. Faith In the Autumn we began attending a new church and it seems to have kicked our faith life up a notch or two. This church is more charismatic than traditional, has far more families with children attend, live music, and sometimes very interactive services, which if you know me at all can imagine that's pretty much my thing :) It also means our girls come willingly, even joyfully to church each Sunday whereas before we found we more and more had to drag them along. Around that same time I commenced to study towards being a lay reader on the Church of England's theology foundation course, a fascinating mix of theology, history, cultural anthropology, and literary criticism. I read a lot of G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis in 2025, and along with weekly conversations with my neighbour, Phil, a retired vicar I find my understanding of scripture and faith shifting, becoming less enlightenment- and explanation-focused, and more about embracing the mystery—perhaps more evangelical. If you've heard about Christian deconstruction, I'm not doing that. I'm doing the opposite: constructing, or reconstructing. It's a curious process, but one I welcome. Last year my word-of-the-year was metanoia and I wrote, "Embracing metanoia will allow me to engage in the ongoing process of reordering and reorganising my life along spiritual principles—and paying attention along the way." While I can't claim to have done that, I believe I've made important steps in that direction. I claim progress, not perfection.

5. Miscellaneous There should always be a miscellaneous category, otherwise it implies everything is structured in an orderly, segmented fashion. But life isn't like that. Thank God! Here's a few random things I feel grateful for: Rayna's ability to study for a zoology degree, and holding her own while being a wife, mother and homemaker; Rayna's new-found friendships with fellow students; my continued Human Givens study, and reaching the next milestone towards becoming a psychotherapist; Zoë's involvement with the local theatrical society, and her involvement in the upcoming panto where she plays a help-desk mermaid with an Essex accent; Asrai's involvement with the Steel City Chorister's an independent cathedral-tradition choir, and our trip with the choir to Berlin in the summer; dog-sitting in Canterbury in the summer holidays; working with my friend Moe Choice; coffee mornings with my friend Lucy; those in-person moments with people in my work community—especially seeing Charles-Louis and Mandy at the same time, for an entire two days; and finally, our cats, Jip and Janneke, each now in their ninth year of life, and each enhancing the lives of their people.

Word of the Year 2 With all this gratitude, it seems fitting that my word for 2026 will be Grace. Both words share a common ancestor in the Latin word gratus, which means 'pleasing', 'welcome', or 'agreeable'. Gemini tells me they represent two sides of the same coin: Grace is the gift given, and Gratitude is the recognition of that gift. In 2026 then, I plan to do a little more of the giving.

And that's all, folks. I wish each of you a very happy new year. I'll leave you with the opening verse of a little known, but charming 12-verse poem by George Barker (1913-1991).

January jumps about
in the frying pan
trying to heat
his frozen feet
like a Canadian.

See you in February—God willing,
Tobias

1 I am a Library, July 2023
2 This is my eighth year of setting a word-of-the-year. Previous ones were Metanoia (2025), Friendship (2024), Possibility (2023), Awake (2022), Moment (2021), Less (2020), and Big (2019). I extend gratitude to my friend Surya for seeding the idea.

—

Postscript: If you are inclined to give me a birthday gift, I'd like to invite you to upgrade to a paid subscription for my substack. In 2025 I begun a paid series entitled Simplicity where I critique the world of work, and offer new (and indeed, ancient) approaches that may just save us from the corporate sins of egocentricity, pride, hubris, entitlement, narcissism, monologue and compliance, to name just a few. Please join me on this journey. Your support, both financially and morally, will be greatly appreciated.

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