Letting Go

Laundry has been folded and put away and I'm enjoying an evening coffee. Possibly not the best of decisions as the caffeine has kept me up the last two nights, but oh well. I need my fix. And if anyone is keeping track of such things, I did NOT go to Starbucks; making a pot at home was sufficient for this evening.

This has been a productive week on many fronts. Restructuring things at the office is going according to plan and is being more or less well received by my employees (a few ruffled feathers, but as of yet no attempts on my life). Thesis reserach is going well and I've been domestically productive after work every night this week. Room by room the apartment is being cleaned and I've enacted a policy of "if I haven't used it in a year, out it goes." Lots of things are going away as I reduce my life at home to a more minimalist approach.

Perhaps the most surprising thing of all is how easily I've found it to give away books. I had amassed quite a collection of Civil War books (and military history in general) before losing interest in the subject seven or eight years ago. I haven't touched most of them in ages, so as they're no use to me, they're going to various co-workers and friends for whom such things are of interest. It's a good feeling to both make use of these things via donation and rid myself of the remnants of long-forgotten phase of my life.

Browsing and sorting my library over the last few weeks has been an insightful exercise in personal evolution. As I've always been a book buyer juxtaposed to a library patron, I have a tangible record at home that reflects profoundly on where I was intellectually, emotionally, and even spiritually at any given point in time.

Growing up in Tidewater and coming from an old Virginia family, having a keen interest in the Civil War was nothing short of an expectation for a native son. The older part of my library clearly reflects this. I don't regret the hours innumerable and money spent pursuing this interest. It was who I was at that time and it probably helped set the foundation for my longstanding avid interest in reading. I have many fond memories of those days.

But over time something happened.

Due in part to college and a maturing, questioning nature, a broader worldview developed as evidenced by a thematic shift in reading to world history, the social sciences, Buddhist philosophy, and natural history. The latter two topics have in recent years come to dominate both my available reading time and my library. It's been years since I've read something on the Civil War or even browsed the related shelves at Barnes and Noble and it has little meaning for me now other than simply being a part of our collective past and no more. Letting go of the past on levels both personal (that part of my library) and intellectual (a broader worldview) is such an important key to happiness in the present moment and a full life.