I sometimes wonder why I ever went to school and why I ever put so much money into books. I had a Mellon fellowship when I began school, and I was richer than I had ever been in my life. Naturally, the money all went for books — a complete Arden 2nd Shakespeare, a Kleine Pauly, the Revels series, a German-Latin Spinoza, a Colli-Montinari Nietzsche, and so on. But now, I am in a job that doesn’t use that part of my Ausbildung, and my wife and I sometimes wonder whether we could have fewer than fourteen bookcases.

Bad idea. This past week, I was asked to help write a paper on client communications modules — the software that lets real estate agents and clients communicate online about what houses the client would like to investigate or buy. I thought of this wonderful passage from Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception:

In the experience of dialogue, there is constituted between the other person and myself a common ground; my thought and his are interwoven into a single fabric, my words and those of my interlocutor are called forth by the state of the discussion, and they are inserted into a shared operation of which neither of us is the creator.

And I put it in, certain that it would be taken out as being too high-flown for the purpose, even though it seemed ideal for expressing the relationship I had in mind. For whatever reason — probably the patience and tolerance of my boss — it stayed in.

So, don’t toss your books, even when you think you need the space. Your past is a part of you, and it should not be thrown away lightly. As Curtis Mayfield once said, “Keep on keepin’ on.”