Midnight Transformations

Before reading The Midnight Library as part of Brandy Clark's book club, I spent quite a bit of time thinking about regret. Both the concept of regrets and the specific instances themselves plagued my mind regularly. Like I'm sure many of us do, as time travel is such a prevalent ideal in our culture, I sometimes think about the top moments or actions I would go back and change if given the chance. The funny thing people don't realize is that we are constantly time traveling, and maybe that's the problem. We're always rapidly moving forward, into the future, whether we like it or not, while simultaneously traveling to the past in our minds while visiting memories, sometimes we even become stuck there. Either direction one goes, too far in the future or the past, the outcome is essentially the same: time spent not being present in the current moment. In other words: time we'll never get back spent not living our lives.

We can create a self-fulfilling prophecy wherein we focus on the ways in which we feel we could have done things differently (meaning better) and so we remain stuck in these past places rather than making new memories.

*Warning: Please don't read further if you don't want spoilers.*

The protagonist in The Midnight Library is in a severely depressed and utterly hopeless place, mentally. She has made it to a point where she can't imagine a reason why she should continue living. She makes the decision to end her life. She awakens in a place where she is given the choice to look back at all her regrets in life and can choose to try out each and every possible life she could have lived if she had made just one choice differently. She starts with the major, more obvious regrets that have plagued her thoughts day in and day out, then moves on to less glaring instances where she could have taken a different path. Time and again, she winds up dissatisfied in each of the lives. In the end, as I suspected, she winds up choosing the life with which she started: The one rife with the regrets that had made her choose to end it all. Through her journey, she discovers that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. Perhaps things happen for a reason and when you’re in the thick of it, it seems like the alternative would have been preferable to your current reality, but your mind often plays tricks on you, psyching you out, and this is in fact not always the case.

I left the Midnight Library, much like Nora, feeling far more hopeful than when I entered. The main feeling I was left with was optimism. This tale brought me hope and completely reframed my way of thinking. I now see the potential in myself and the situations in which I find myself rather than maintaining a laser focus on the missed opportunities I’ve let pass me by.

I was so moved by what I took away from this story that I designed stickers and had them printed that showcase the message. This “Sunrise Potential” image that I created represents the potential we have with each day to start anew, to continue from where we left off, to make progress in the direction of our goals and dreams, regardless of what point we’re starting at. We could be at our lowest low, like Nora, and there is something that nothing and no one can ever take away from us: our potential. Our potential to get up and try again after we are knocked down is always within us. Our potential to grow, learn, and change each and every day and in any moment is innate. Our potential for happiness is never gone, regardless of how blue we may feel.

My thinking was altered significantly by the philosophical journey this text took me on. I am grateful for the change in mindset that it brought about. There are some things from the version of me that I was before I read this book that remain true still, such as my affinity for media content and thought trains that lean on the side of nostalgia. This fact is never more true than when it comes to the music to which I listen. However, I am able to bring my attention to thoughts of the future, to my future, on a far more regular basis these days.

I still enjoy music about regrets, but now I feel better equipped to "beat regret when I [feel] I [have] the nerve" as Eric Church (the king of nostalgic, regret-centric lyrics) says in the brilliant lyrics to "Kill A Word."

Each book is an adventure, let’s turn the page.