The Midnight Library


Do you ever play the "what if" game in your head, wondering how your life might be different if you had made different decisions in the past?

I say different but I actually mean better. Because we don't ever seem to perseverate about good decisions, do we? I never think back and wonder what might have happened if I had dropped out of college and married the Domino's delivery driver who used to bring pizzas to campus. I do sometimes think back to regrets, or missed opportunities. 

So does Nora Seed. the protagonist in Matt Haig's The Midnight Library. And when she decides that her life is no longer worth living, she wakes up in this library, a space between life and death, where each book in the seemingly infinite rows of shelves represent a life based on a decision Nora has made. 

Life is full of decisions. "Some big, some small. But every time one decision is taken over another, the outcomes differ. An irreversible variation occurs, which in turn leads to further variations. These books are portals to all the lives you could be living," Mrs. Elm tells her. Which life will Nora choose? No spoilers here—you’ll have to read the book to find out!

As much as I enjoyed the book, I don’t think I’d ever want to visit The Midnight Library. Sometimes, I entertain this fantasy that I wake up tomorrow and it is the eve of the first day of high school all over again. I admit that my memory is fuzzy on the details, but I remember my best friend Tamar spent the night. As we fell asleep, I played Cherish by Kool & The Gang on repeat as I mooned my heartbreak over some crush that, honestly, I have no memory of now. Poor Tamar, listening to those damn seagulls mewing and crying over and over until I finally drifted off. 

In my fantasy, I return to high school with the confidence, motivation, and knowledge that I have now. I study more, take Spanish instead of French, and refrain from unfurling my teenage angst on my mother. I spend less time dreaming about pimply faced boys and more time reading the assigned literature in my English class. 

I play out this fantasy for a while, erasing my past mistakes with smart decisions and better choices for a while until I stop. Because, as anyone who has seen Back to the Future knows, there are rules to time travel. You can't go back in time and change the course of your life without changing the entire trajectory. I can't only erase the regrets and keep the happy times. Erasing seagulls on repeat could also erase my life as I know it right now.

When Paul and I find ourselves lamenting an event or choice we made in the past, I quote the lyrics to The Avett Brothers song All My Mistakes:

But I can't go back
And I don't want to
'Cause all my mistakes
They brought me to you

We’ve all made mistakes in the past. And as Nora learns, changing the events doesn’t erase the regrets, it just means different regrets. What’s more important is to focus on the potential of today. The decisions we have yet to make and the implications of those decisions on the lives of others. The Midnight Library is a good reminder that “It is not 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 of 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.”

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