The Midnight Library by Matt Haig is a thought-provoking tale about the regrets we harbour over the missed opportunities and choices we have made in our life.  It follows the story of Nora Seed who, in her youth, was both a promising swimmer and musician with the ability to go to the Olympics or make it big with a record deal.  Under the pressure of her father’s athletic ambitions for her and her own anxiety and stage fright, Nora passed up both opportunities.  Now at 35, with both her parents dead, a brother who no longer talks to her, and an ex-fiancé who she walked out on two days before the wedding, Nora finds herself alone, depressed, and working a dead-end job at a local music store.  

 

When this job falls through, her only piano student’s mother cancels his lessons, and her cat is killed by a car, Nora finds the weight of her existence too much to bear and decides to take her own life.  Instead of passing to the other side, she finds herself in a library full of an unlimited number of books, and face to face with her old school librarian, Mrs Elm.  This library is the place between life and death, and the endless books all represent the lives that Nora could have lived if she had made different decisions.  Nora can sample any of these lives she so desires.  As she reads each book, she is transported into the life written within its pages.  If she finds one she is happy with, she can continue to go on living that existence.  However, the moment she feels disappointment or unhappiness set in she is instantly transported back to the library where she can again try another book and another life.

 

Under the guidance of Mrs Elm Nora picks out books with lives that represent the fulfillment of her biggest regrets, beginning with the regret of leaving her fiancé.  She finds herself transported to a pub in the idyllic English countryside which she owns with her now-husband.  At first this life seems successful and fulfilling, until Nora realises her husband does not seem like the same carefree man she knew.  She soon discovers that he has been unfaithful to her and their life together is anything but happy, and with this miserable realisation finds herself back in the library.

 

Nora then continues to choose various lives, each with the same outcome – they never turn out to be the happy and content lives that she imagined they would be.  In fact, the majority of them are just the opposite; they are plain miserable.  In the life where her cat doesn’t get killed by a car, he dies on the same day from illness anyway.  In another life she moves with her best friend to Australia and this same friend is killed in an accident.  In the life she is a successful Olympic swimmer she suffers depression, her father has an affair, and her mother passes way prematurely.  And in yet another life where she is a famous rockstar her brother is dead.  No matter what life Nora finds herself in, they are all fraught with disappointment and pain.

 

Here we see the story clearly reflects one of the big themes found in A Course in Miracles; that chasing happiness within the world doesn’t work.  A primary focus of the Course is teaching us to look – really look – at our lives and the world at large and see the pain and fear that is buried just beneath the surface.  No matter how much we achieve, do or get in the world, nothing truly lasts and even if we appear relatively happy with our lives there is always the threat that this could be taken away at any moment.  If we look honestly, we see that nothing really works here, nothing brings us lasting happiness, and in the end we all experience disappointment, loss and death.  Yet we still look to this same unfulfilling world to bring us the happiness that has so far eluded us, certain that it must be out there somewhere if we just make the right choice or search in the right place.  We believe if we can find that perfect partner, perfect career, perfect family and perfect life that we will finally have the peace and contentment we are seeking.  But the search is in vain.  We never find the answers to our problems in the world, because the answers aren’t in the world;

 

 

As Nora discovers, the more lives she enters and the more she tries to fix her worldly circumstances, the more miserable she becomes.  No matter what regrets she undoes and what lives she fulfills, there is never one that satisfies her.

 

As she goes on, Nora begins to realise that within the disappointing and hurtful experiences she is having, there is also great opportunity. As the librarian, Mrs Elm puts it, “Even these bad experiences are serving a purpose, don’t you see?” (p.186).  This echoes A Course in Miracles‘ teaching that we can change the purpose of how we see everything in our life, thus also changing what we use all our experiences for;

 

 

When we use our worldly situations to try and get what we want in the world – a certain type of life or experience – we are using it for the purpose of the ego.  But when we decide to look at our life, all the trials and challenges as well as the seeming successes and triumphs, and use them for our inner growth and awakening, we shift our focus to the Holy Spirit’s purpose instead.

 

In one life, Nora comes to the realisation that her parents, who she perceived to be part of the problem as to why she has been so miserable, are really just the same as her.  They are people too, struggling with the same feelings of inadequacy under the heavy weight of the world’s expectations.  Nora realises, ‘she had loved her parents more than she ever knew, and right then, she forgave them completely’ (p.138).  A Course in Miracles points to a major turning point in our lives when we make the decision to see someone as the same as us, that is, we understand our shared experiences and underlying unity with them;

 

Somehow, somewhere he has made a deliberate choice in which he did not see his interests as apart from someone else’s (M-1.1:2). 

 

This experience of love and wholeness towards another is often an invitation to let the Holy Spirit’s purpose into more areas of our life.  It is the invitation to use our life as a classroom where we learn to look past our differences and see the same perfect Spirit within everyone.

 

In her final life in the midnight library, it appears that Nora may have just found herself in the perfect life.  In undoing the regret of saying no to a coffee date she finds herself married to a wonderful man, with a daughter, job and house she loves.  Everything appears perfect.  She stays in this life for longer than all the others, and Nora believes she may finally have found what she was looking for.  But then she crosses paths with a boy getting arrested by police who she recognises as the kid she teaches piano to in her root life.  In this life however, she isn’t his piano teacher and without her positive influence he has turned to a life of crime.  Although Nora tries desperately to cling to this new life she loves, this saddening turn of events finds her once again back in the library.

 

Nora’s dilemma in this situation is reminiscent of the section in A Course in Miracles titled the two pictures.  It uses the metaphor of a frame, which is the outward appeal, glitz and glamour of the world, and the picture held within which holds the true reality of that world;

 

 

On face value, the frame looks wonderful, appealing and valuable – just like this life appeared to Nora.  On the surface it was almost perfect – just what she had been searching for.  But the frame is merely a distraction for the truth within;

 

 

When we look deeper within to the picture of our lives, we see that they are not as perfect as the frame makes them appear to be.  When Nora sees the boy getting arrested, she realises that while some parts may work, there will always be other parts that don’t.  There will always be a picture of pain and suffering held within the beautiful frame that is trying to conceal it.

 

In the end Nora realises that no matter what life she chooses they are ultimately all the same; ‘Maybe that’s what all lives were, though. Maybe even the most seemingly perfectly intense or worthwhile lives ultimately felt the same. Acres of disappointment and monotony and hurts and rivalries but with flashes of wonder and beauty’ (p.137).  She comes to the conclusion that she does not wish to die anymore and that the life she was already living, while it had its many challenges, was worth working through.  After all; ‘It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see’ (p.259).  As it is with all our lives, it is how we perceive them that counts.  The most seemingly wonderful or the most tragically sad can all be used for the purpose of love and awakening if given over to the Holy Spirit’s purpose;