Too Many Books

I was demonstrating to someone today that I could get rid of a box of books off my shelf just like that, by setting a box by the shelf and putting them in it.

I have a bunch of books. But a lot of my books are ones I bought on a second's notice on the cheap, so I'm not so terribly attached to them as it might seem.

I do have a philosophy about them that would help me get rid of them. It's this: There are lots of other books that I could have and find indispensable. So because I don't have them, it doesn't make any sense that the ones I have would be indispensable now. That is, if I can live without the ones I don't have, then I can live without the ones I do have. It's an offshoot of one of my older philosophies, which is this, If you can't have everything in the world, there's no reason to have anything.

There is, to be 100% accurate, plenty of reasons to have something. Because you do need a certain amount of things in the course of life. But you could be stripped down to about nothing and still get along perfectly well. Having something, say a book, or not having it isn't going to make any big difference. Anyway, there are millions (or many thousands) of books you're never going to have, so why worry about the ones you do have?

All that said, it doesn't follow that I'm going to get rid of them wholesale. Because I might get some good out of them.