{"id":2161,"date":"2025-11-27T10:58:40","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T18:58:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/?p=2161"},"modified":"2025-11-27T10:58:40","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T18:58:40","slug":"thought-for-the-day-november-26-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/thought-for-the-day-november-26-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Thought for the Day &#8211; November 26, 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Thought for the Day<\/span><br \/>\n<em>Wednesday, November 26, 2025<\/em><\/h4>\n<p>Over the years, I\u2019ve collected thousands of books. Now, at 87, it\u2019s time to say goodbye. This is hard for me. But I have begun. Some I donate, some I sell. And a very few, I say, \u201cNot yet.\u201d Some I cannot yet part with. I was helped in this task by a simple dream that said, \u201cRemember them.\u201d From this dream, I developed a ritual. I would hold each book and try to remember why I bought it, when I bought it, and what I had learned from it. I was surprised by how clear and accessible most of this remembrance was. Some of these encounters were like meeting an old friend I had not seen in years, and the time of separation just evaporated, and one was just present. So, yes, books are like friends, perhaps not just \u201clie\u201d friends, but friends indeed. By enacting this ritual, my task has not become easier, but it has become meaningful in satisfying ways. At my age, saying \u201cgoodbye\u201d to anything takes on a poignancy that burrows deep. Bittersweet comes to mind.<\/p>\n<p>Russ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thought for the Day Wednesday, November 26, 2025 Over the years, I\u2019ve collected thousands of books. Now, at 87, it\u2019s time to say goodbye. This is hard for me. But I have begun. Some I donate, some I sell. And a very few, I say, \u201cNot yet.\u201d Some I cannot yet part with. I was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-soon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2161"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2162,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2161\/revisions\/2162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}