Anchors for the Living

How Objects Hold Us to Each Other

The Things We Step On

There is a small Turkish rug that lives in front of my bathroom vanity. I step on it every morning. I brush my teeth over it. I walk across it without thinking. And yet, it may be one of the most sacred items I own. Not because of its color, or its craft, or its foreign origin—but because of who gave it to me.

He was dying when he bought it. A final voyage, a Mediterranean cruise taken not in defiance of his diagnosis, but in harmony with it. He didn’t want to bring home photographs. He wanted to bring gifts. Pieces of the world he still had access to—scents, textures, colors—brought back for the people he still loved. Not as parting tokens, but as anchors. He never used that word. But that’s what they were.

This rug has outlived him now. And every time my bare foot presses into its fading threads, I remember him. Not with tears, not always—but with presence. His laugh, his generosity, the quiet courage he showed in knowing he had little time left and choosing to spend it making someone else’s morning routine a little more beautiful. This rug is not a museum piece. It is used. It is wearing. It is slowly becoming part of the dust of life. But isn’t that how we love people too? By using the love, not preserving it in glass?

The Glass That Holds More Than Beer

There’s a cheap craft brewery glass in my cabinet—one of those humble, snifter glasses that usually come free at the end of a beer tour. It’s not fine crystal. It’s not engraved—but it does have an awesome print on it. It doesn’t even match the rest of the kitchen. And yet, it is the one I reach for almost every time I want a beer at home.

Why? Because of who gave it to me.

That person is still very much alive. They don’t know that I keep using it. They’ve probably forgotten they even gave it to me. But every time I lift it, every time that wonderful shape hits my palm, it brings a quiet surge of gratitude. Not in words. Just a small, subconscious nod to the universe: I’m glad they exist. And what a remarkable, understated thing that is—to feel glad someone exists, without needing them in the room to feel it.

This is the part of anchoring Tony Robbins touches on but doesn’t fully mine. Anchors are not just about hacking your mental state into courage or calm. They’re about memory. About emotional wiring that we lay down, one object, one moment, one connection at a time.

What if we began to recognize these anchors as part of the web that ties us not just to ourselves, but to each other?

Threads in the Web of Us

We anchor ourselves to meaning through physical things. The worn sweater of a parent. The recipe card in someone’s handwriting. A keychain. A cracked phone case. A favorite song on a playlist we didn’t make. These things do not possess power—but they hold it. Like a candle holds fire. They become the physical stand-ins for people who matter to us—alive or gone—and in doing so, they keep us from drifting too far into forgetting.

And yes, they will break. Or get lost. Or be donated to Goodwill when we move one too many times. But here’s the grace of it: the power is not in the object. The power is in us. The object just helps us remember we’re connected.

You don’t need to keep every item, just the right ones. And when one leaves you, trust that another will come—unexpected and unannounced—to take its place. A new anchor, for a new era, for a new connection yet to deepen.

So don’t cry when one fades. Bless it. Honor the memory it carried. And stay open to the anchors forming around you now, quietly, invisibly, in the rhythms of your life. Because we are always anchoring each other. Not just in death, but in life. In the mundane. In the shared cup, the daily rug, the overlooked token that says: You matter. You are remembered. Even now.

In the end, anchoring isn’t just about reclaiming emotional states. It’s about remembering who we are, through the people who helped shape us, and through the physical echoes they leave behind.

And if you look around your life right now—you might find you’re already surrounded by them.