Niche down

Cleaning out my bookshelf, I am getting older—more stodgy and set in my ways. The books that I gathered in my youth were diverse. Now, I put certain books in a box to take to the store and sell. Others, I leave on my shelf. With the box packed, I turn back and look at the shelf, leaning my head to one side to read the titles on the spines. The books I have kept seem to belong to a more cohesive theme. Some of the books that I put in the box I never even read. There are so many ideas and so many ways of life. But I have only one mind and one life to live. How much can I contain? Certainly less than everything. I hope the books I’ve kept are the right ones. I want the power to know everything and the truth to know the right things, but I will likely achieve neither. I will only know a small chapter of the great library, but even that is so much more than nothing.