People are great, but what everyone needs is a place. Their place. The place that is a refuge from daily life, that feels safe, that makes your blood pressure fall simply by walking through the door.

My place is the gym. Not just any gym, but the gym I’ve belonged to for three years. At first, I didn’t think much of it. It’s not glitzy, no glam. In fact, it’s old people, a lot of them. One might easily mistake it for a senior living home at first glance. Ladies with walkers and full faces of makeup playing bridge at 11 a.m. Men in calf-length socks and white sneakers, walking on the treadmill, slowly.

It’s also tennis players, a lot of them, many of them kids or teenagers. The courts are nice, and there’s usually some regional tournament or something going on. The youth helps balance the frail age, though there’s really no in-between here, at my gym.

It’s not new. Or remodeled, for that matter. There’s a maintenance man who keeps on leaky ceilings and chipping paint, but I’d guess most everything is largely unchanged since the place was built (maybe sometime in the ’80s). I like this aspect of my gym. Not everything has to be shiny and trendy to be functional. And functionally, it has what I need: StairMasters, free weights, some weight machines. Space. A small room with wood floors and mirrored walls to practice dance. A roomy locker room with hairdryers, cotton balls, even mouthwash. A sauna. A private, hot, coal-burning sauna that usually has no one in it.

The people at the front desk know me. They’re friendly. But mercifully, they just say “hi,” then I’m on my way. I don’t have to tell them how I am. What I did last weekend. How my son is doing. We just say “hi.”

Gratitude is slippery, hard to latch onto. It comes in quickly and goes away even quicker. I don’t practice gratitude for the wealth in my life as often as I should. But every day when I open the door to my gym—the door on the right, the one with the handle that’s been kinda busted for months—I actively feel grateful.

And I don’t even have to try.