How The Book Midnight Library Reminded Me To Trust The Timing Of My Life
**Trigger warning: Suicide, Mental Health, Dying
Years ago I was super into reading fiction books. I often bought a few at a time with the hopes I’d go from one book to the next.
Sometimes I’d get so emotionally invested in the book I just finished I’d have to take a few days off before starting something new.
And then a few weeks would pass and I’d lose my momentum.
I also call this my ADHD hyperfocus that begins to wear thin.
Six months ago I decided to re-launch into the world. My second child had just turned one and I felt ready to do something just for me.
I wasn’t sure if it was work, projects, or just finding new hobbies I just knew that I was ready to begin and add more into my life as I was feeling more like myself.
As I went into this I decided I wanted to take myself seriously in a way I hadn’t before… I wanted to make taking care of myself a serious part of my next steps.
It had become clear to me after 6 months of individual therapy that doing personal work like unlearning limiting beliefs, practicing grace rather than pushing through, and loving myself was the most important part of the puzzle called life.
At this point I’d done a ton of self discovery and now I wanted to learn healthy habits to support the growing path I was on so that I could give myself more of a chance of staying consistent and be in for the long haul.
One of the healthy habits I adopted was a night time routine to help me relax before bed.
Part of the routine is shutting down screens at 10:30 and getting into bed with a book to help unwind my mind.
When I started this new schedule I realized I didn’t have a book to read and needed to find one to dig into.
I went on to google and typed in “best fiction books 2024” and a page pulled up. In the sponsored section the first book listed was “Midnight Library” by Matt Haig.
A book that at one time I ordered because other people had mentioned it to me but never got around to reading
I remember I didn’t really understand or connect to the description on the back of the book.
So, it sat on a shelf since November 30th, 2021.
Until it didn’t.
I read the summary of the book and what I read blew my mind.
I was now ready to receive the words on the screen…3 years later.
The premise of the book from Good Reads shared “Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets? A novel about all the choices that go into a life well lived.”
And there it was.
My future self bought the book years ago knowing that one day I’d be ready to read it.
Let me take it a step further to full explain the meaning of this timing.
The book explores themes within human existence, such as regret, mortality, choice, the pursuit for happiness.
**Spoiler Alert: I will be sharing details and the ending of the book next!
Nora Seed was unsatisfied in her life to the point that she wanted to end it. Her perspective of the world around her was that it was unfair & she felt overwhelmed with regret about choices she made in her life.
Nora ruminates on regrets, self-blame, and self-criticism.
She decides she has nothing to live for and she attempts suicide.
When she wakes up she finds herself in a space that is stacked with books called, The Midnight Library — a place in between life and death.
A grey area.
When she arrives at the Midnight Library, a friendly face, Ms. Elm, greets her. Ms. Elm was Nora’s school librarian whom she connected with when she was a child and going through hardship.
Ms. Elm is there to guide her through the library of life choices.
She shares with Nora that all the books in the library are lives Nora could have chosen…an infinite amount of opportunities.
Things like becoming an Olympic swimmer, or married to a wine maker, growing into a famous rockstar, or living in Antartica as a glaciologist.
Nora beings to explore each book. Jumping into lives that could have been lived and seeing if one would be a life she would want to choose.
If the life was not a choice she wanted she would return to the library.
Time after time she’d return to the library realizing it was not a life she wanted but she did learn something about herself each and every time.
Nora realizes that that the choices she made (regrets of things she never tried in her root life) were actually necessary for her to become the person she is today.
She realized there are multiple ways to live and every single choice (small and big) has meaning and infinite possibilities along side it.
This realization helps her come to terms with the regrets and finally recognize her own self worth and capabilities.
I had 3 big take aways from Midnight Library.
The First: That there is endless potential within all of us and WE are the ones who often stop ourselves from greatness.
While Nora was exploring her alternative lives -she was on a search to find the perfect fit.
A life she would want to stay in.
Towards the end of the story she felt that she had finally found the live she wanted to live and yet it still wasn’t the one she was meant for.
When she returns to the library — (upset about leaving the life she thought was the one) the library is now falling apart.
Which means that in her root life she is actually dying.
Nora has a choice. She can either fight to live or choose to die.
After exploring so many versions of herself while in the different book lives she accepts all of the life choices she has made within her main life.
Nora realizes that there is no perfect life and that each has its own challenges and the idea is to find self-acceptance and embrace our own imperfections.
With that Nora is catapulted back into her own life where she fights to live.
And she does.
Confronted with mortality she decides to embrace living in the present and let the future unfold how it will.
She recognizes that each decision we make in our life impacts the next decision and that there is no decision too insignificant.
The second: I’ve been chasing perfection and newsflash perfection does not exist.
I’ve been chasing a versions of me that probably exists somewhere on some universal plane.
But the truth is: none of them would have fit, none of them were lives I was meant to live.
I was meant to live this one.
I’m not a failure that I didn’t accomplish some of them.
Those “lives” helped bring me here.
“It’s easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more and said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. But it’s not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It’s the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy. Of course, we can’t visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we feel in any life is still available. We just have to close our eyes and savor the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We don’t have to do everything to be everything because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility. Yesterday I knew I had no future, and that was impossible for me to accept my life as it is now. And yet today, that same messy life seems full of hope. Potential. Will my life be miraculously free from pain, despair, grief, heartbreak, hardship, loneliness, depression? No. But do I want to live? Yes.” - Nora Seed, Midnight Library
I captured one of those particularly hard days. Feeling lost, stuck, unsure of my direction. Wondering if it would ever come together.
My life isn’t perfect. In fact there are several aspects of it that are hard, painful, and sometimes I think others have it better than I do.
The third take away: self-criticism and judgment has stopped me from trying things or believing in myself. I have often lived in the what ifs, regret, or past thinking I should have known or made better choices.
Sometimes I travel down the path of comparison and it truly robs me from my current place.
I find myself in a cycle where I complain and then feel regret about complaining when I do have so much.
I’ve even noticed a trend where I push away happiness and good things because I am worried they will go away or I don’t deserve them.
This book has reminded me that all the decisions I made were the right decisions at the time and that they brought me here.
Years ago when I bought this book I thought it would be a fun read.
Because that’s where I was in 2021.
I didn’t get it.
I was chasing external things.
Success, fame, money, status.
In 2021 I didn’t have an autistic son yet or a daughter that stayed in the NICU for 3 weeks.
In 2021 I was living a life that wasn’t mine…it was a version I thought I was suppose to be.
I constructed myself to fit a life I thought I should be living instead of seeing the life I was living all along.
I wasn’t ready to embrace what I know now.
I had an experience like Nora. Although, I did not take action and commit suicide I have had thoughts about dying. I’ve had several episodes of depression including two rounds of postpartum depression.
I would think things like, “What is there to live for? I am a burden to everyone and have achieved nothing in my life”.
I didn’t see the beauty and gifts of my chosen life.
I thought that the alternative versions of me were better.
I thought who I was trying to be was a superior version than the self I am.
I started Midnight Library at exactly the right time and ended it on exactly the right day.
The morning of the day I finished the book I had a group event where I’d be around a lot of people and I decided to let myself be seen.
I decided to relax in my skin.
I was able to connect, see, feel all that I usually miss when I’m masked up.
I was able to digest words and the experience in a deeper way.
I usually leave these type of events exhausted because I’m so busy living in an alternative version of myself.
But that day I came home energized and at peace.
Acceptance of self and of the life we actually live is the most powerful key of all.
While driving to the group event in the morning I finally figured out how to share my words in a way that felt right to me!
I kept looking to the “experts” and thinking they knew better and their way was the right way.
And as I was driving it clicked: I was enough just doing it in my own way.
I’ve always been told to niche. That doing it the way someone else says is right, is right.
And it wasn’t until that morning that I realized I AM THE NICHE.
My innate skills, talents, individual imprint on this world is the gift.
To be yourself is the niche.
Because that is what will set you apart, that is what will set you free, that is what will actually encourage you to LIVE.
My future self knew I was moving in this direction and so she bought the book for me.
She bought the book for me and knew I would finish it on a day that had a ton of meaning.
And, what I see now: everyday has meaning.