Jeremy spent his entire life collecting books, piece by piece.
It started with a list of books he dreamed of reading—a comprehensive list of 1,500 titles across self-help, biographies, and psychology: the subjects he loved most.
Just creating the list took hours of painstaking research. But Jeremy didn’t stop there. He made it his mission to find every book “in the wild”—meaning he hunted for them only at indie bookstores and secondhand shops.
Many of the titles were out of circulation, which turned the search into a decades-long pursuit. After 30 years, he had found about 1,250 of the 1,500 books on his list.
It was truly a life’s work.
Today, it’s easy to look at that and think: Wouldn’t it be faster to just use Amazon or eBay? And it would. With enough money and a few quick searches, Jeremy could’ve gathered most of those books in a matter of weeks instead of spending decades.
With the vastness of the internet, we can find what we want—down to an exact edition—within minutes.
So here’s the real question:
Do we look at Jeremy’s life and call it wasted?
Or do we see it as a life deeply lived?
Ask yourself that—and pay attention to your answer.
