One of the challenges of a maturing life is deciding what to keep, what to cherish, what to let go. Physical items. Relationships. Memories and experiences. Ambitions.
You probably know that I love books. LOVE books.
When we moved from one house to another in Iowa, about 6 years ago, I winnowed my physical book collection down from 11 bookshelves and a bunch of boxes to 5 bookshelves. That was painful.
I further winnowed from 5 bookshelves to 2 bookshelves when we moved to Florida. That was even more painful.
I’m getting better at reading Kindle books, but it’s still frustrating when I want to study and mark up a book with my notes. I currently have 690 Kindle books.
I kept these physical books:
- Volumes I know will be valuable to continue to reread and study
- Rare books which would be difficult to replace
- Treasured books which greatly influenced me, loaded with my personal notes
- Well-loved and annotated Bibles
- A few sentimental volumes (e.g., my boyhood copy of My Side of the Mountain)
Making those decisions about books is simpler than deciding what to keep and what to let go in other dimensions.
