The other day, I had to clean up boxes of books that I have been carrying around my life for 20 years now at my in-laws. My gf and they have asked me to do that periodically, I avoided it somehow and only separated myself from books that I didn't feel strongly attached to. It was already devastating, though, because many of those were books I inherited from my parents and grand-parents, and then had to throw away. German or Czech language in France, books of literature of philosophy in the present world, almost utterly worthless objects. It took me a week to overcome that slap of absurdity. This time, I don't feel much attachments even to most books I grew up with. I even have positive thoughts. Like those books on China, Japan, the italian books I bought with my mom in Milan - I can now read them, have friends in these regions. Some authors pop up because my friends recently told me about them, in different languages, age groups. Back then, those books were my only connection to the world. All I knew and cared about had learned from them. But I had always remained a reader. Almost an archivist. That is I would know about the Trojan War or the latin authors of the european middle ages or introductory notions to real analysis without any need or intuition. I would just know, until my memory grew patchy and I didn't exactly know anymore. That's when I stopped being a reader. For a while I didn't know what to do with myself, felt almost dead. Then, I started to meet real people, gain confidence, talk, teach, laugh. I know much less today than I used to but what I do know today is much more impactful. What makes a friend happy, how to have a good time at the bakery, how to enjoy and remember an ever changing landscape. How to change the perceive length of time. How to love, how to develop friendship and so on. Yet the moment my gf and I packed the books to sell or give away, I had to lean on her shoulder to cry like I hadn't in a long time. What I see in that inconvenient pile of heavy paper that everybody around me just rolls their eyes about, are all the potential possibilities I saw for myself at a certain point, none of which materialized. And for the nth time I have to take my past which piled up as some rusty artefacts in a one way street, and essentially throw it away. A 40EUR book that fueled your passion for X will now be re-sold for 0.50. Your possible future as Y goes to charity. Z, the moment where your life finally takes off, might even be refused by them because they already have 100 versions of it. Current life in general gives us too often the signal that something we cared about is meaningless. We not only buy to throw away, we also own and grow to throw away. After 15 dehydrating minutes, my gf tells me this. "You don't need this books. They are you." "But I don't remember anything..." "Everytime you talk, you say something on the level of all these philosophers and authors. In all the languages. People like you, feel good around you. You don't need objects to remind you of who you are. They were a step of your becoming." Dixit the woman I want to leave to have some sexual adventures and bath in the passion of the new and unexplored.