i read a book! (#4): The Midnight Library - Matt Haig
⚠️ Spoilers ahead!
TW: suicide
About the Book
(Taken directly from the front flap of the book) "Between life and death there is a library. Up until now, Nora Seed's life has been full of misery and regret. She feels she has let everyone down. When she finds herself in the Midnight Library, she has a chance to make things right."
The Midnight Library is a magical place that contains an infinite number of possible lives that Nora could have lived. Nora is put on a quest to go from life to life until she can find the perfect one, but what really is the best way to live?
my thoughts:
i actually bought this book because the leader of bts (kim namjoon, aka RM) read it.
he's very well-read and a great writer/speaker as well.
honestly this might be one of my favorite books ever.
it wasn't perfect, as many things aren't, but for me, nora seed was so relatable.
a lot of things weren't going too well for nora - she had just gotten fired from her job at the local music store, her brother didn't want to see her anymore, and to top it all off, her cat had died.
throughout the book i felt nora's sadness, confusion, and pain so deeply because i had felt exactly what she had felt.
nora had been struggling for a while when she decided to end it, but then she found herself standing in the midnight library.
in the midnight library, you could jump into any possible life of yours, where you made a different decision than in your root life.
once you are disappointed with the life you have chosen, you return to the library.
when nora jumped into a life chosen based on a regret from the past, she realized that it was not the life she wanted to live.
and through this, she was able to erase her regrets, one by one.
at one point, with the help of the librarian, she comes to a realization that every book she had chosen was to achieve someone else's dream - a life where she ran a pub with her ex-boyfriend, a life where she listened to her father and didn't quit swimming, a life where she stayed in the band with her brother.
it made me wonder if my dreams or goals are truly my own or if they're someone else's.
and i think for a while, definitely while growing up, my goals were mostly my parents'.
i think i have my own dreams and goals now, but i'm still struggling to figure out the expectations i hold for myself, and not uphold the ones created for me as a child.
slowly but surely she realizes that maybe, there are things worth living for.
lives that she wouldn't mind living.
"the only way to learn is to live."
i liked this quote.
nora returns to her root life by realizing that she wants to live, and writing it into reality.
she realizes that her life has potential, and despite all the hardships that come with life, she wants to live.
i think this book helped me a lot in that currently, i'm not really sure where i'm headed or where i want to be headed, but there is potential, and there is hope.
we can have a million regrets but the truth is that that time does not come back around.
"But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy.
We can't tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.
Of course, we can't visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we'd feel in any life is still available. We don't have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don't have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don't have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasures of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies."
we are all living the lives we should be right now.
you are doing great, just by being alive.
thank you for reading!