20 December 2022
SPOILER: THERE ARE MANY HINTS TO THE END OF THE BOOK. READ AT YOUR PERIL.
Just finished an interesting book called The Midnight Library by Matt Haig 2020. The short version of the story: Nora is having a bad life where she sees everything has gone wrong and believes it is all her own fault. She suicides but ends up in a library of books with no titles and all in various shades of green. There she meets Mrs. Elm her long ago school librarian. Mrs. Elm explains that the books contain all the lives she could have had if she had made different choices. The first book she looks at, a grey book, is her book of regrets, listing all the regrets she has had in life.
When Nora chooses a regret, a book arrives that contains the life she would have had if she had made a different choice. Popping into the life in mid-stream she lives the life until she is not satisfied or content with it at which time she pops back to the library. She explores her life as a rock star, Olympic swimmer, and some mundane lives where she walks dogs for a living and is moving in with a guy who is….bland.
Through the book she contemplates her “root life” which is the one she suicided in and the book (the alternate life) she has opened in the library. She is between life and death in the library. She compares her root life with the book life. The moment she is not content with the book life she returns to the library. Two examples: 1, She wants to live the life where she is a good cat owner. Her cat had died the night she suicided, she assumes, since found in the street, from being hit by a car; she wants the life where her cat is an indoor cat. The problem is, in that life, the cat is dead because the cat had a genetic abnormality and was going to die anyway. Although found in the street the cat had not been hit by a car. 2, She finds the perfect life which then slips from her, she feels it coming but cannot stop slipping back to the library.
These two examples are of interest here. I have a regret pile. Often it seems large but I suspect it is no more nor less than many people and probably smaller than a lot since I have lived, relatively in my opinion, an easy life compared to many. None the less there are still things.
The cat example:
There is this funny misconception about regrets and decisions–negative consequences were not inevitable. There is this idea in Historical thinking called the counterfactual, used a lot in historical fiction. The idea is that a change in one fact certainly changes the immediate history but may in fact end up ultimately having the original result anyway. A series of articles I used to have, called What If.,, explored this idea in major historical events. Making Voltaire, the cat Nora owned, an inside cat still resulted in the death of the cat because the cat had a genetic problem that was going to kill it either way. The decision that caused her regret was completely out of her control.
Looking into my own life and re-evaluating my decisions has often led to the same probable end. I think this can be attributed to several things. One, we do not think on a sufficiently complicated basis to understand the nuance of the event or our roll in it. Two, thinking, by necessity, in oversimplified terms we do not add in the actual reason for something happening because we don’t know the actual reason. Three, 20/20 vision in hindsight does not give credit to the difficulty of making decisions in real time while not knowing all the unexpected and real consequences of them.
My example here is my divorce. I had a lot of prescribed and/or proscribed parameters on getting married. A few are, I had to have a career, I wanted children, we had to have mutual interests, and several others. Some of these things were more important than others. Some of the regrets: I should have waited one or two years before getting married—we did not know each other well enough; We had assumptions about each other that were not correct; Having early music in common was great but not enough; Not understanding my personality and hers—let’s call this baggage— and having no mechanisms in place to discuss them led to lots of problems and resentments and eventually divorce. But this is hindsight. I did not understand the full force of my misconceptions of the parameters I had at the time though I had hints of some forebodings; I felt trapped by my own self into going through with it. To be clear, she did not trap me, I trapped myself.
Moving on, The perfect life Nora finds herself in:
Ah, the perfect life. As one knows there is no such thing, though many try to pretend on fakebook. In Nora’s alternate good life, she is married and has a kid, is a professor of philosophy at Cambridge. She loves this life but while living it realizes there are people who are dead, people she helped in her root life that know her not in this one. People who have gone down bad roads because she was not there to offer an alternative. She loves the life but ends up back in the library as the library is disintegrating.
Back to my example, my divorce. My marriage was not great but there were some great times and great things that came of it. There were some things we did, that I was able to do, only because of the woman I married (at least if one does not consider the counterfactual, or alternate decisions leading to the same outcomes). I also have two great kids. I have good relationships with both. Having moved to Canada during my marriage I now have met a great woman that is great for me and we are surprisingly compatible. I would never have met her if I had not married who I did. So, what is there here to regret when part was bad and much after is great?
This is the fundamental problem with regrets and the underlying theme of The Midnight Library; Life is too complicated to comprehend all that one’s life does, one’s decisions affect, or the consequences of it all. Yet we spend a good deal of life condemning ourselves for them. There are good and bad parts, there are good and bad aspects of all we do. We are not omniscient and therefore cannot know all that will happen or all who will be influenced into their own decisions as a result of ours. Can butterflies cause hurricanes?
Once, in high school my band director let me prepare and conduct the band in a rehearsal (thanks Mark). One of the French horn parts was all off beats which is typical for French horn parts but also difficult to play. Out of frustration one of the horn players (Wendy) said it was pointless and useless to play as she felt it did not matter in the scheme of things. I tried to explain that it may be hard, it may seem pointless, but the overall effect of the part on the entire bands sound was just as important as the other parts.
We think of ourselves as too significant or not significant enough. When we are downhearted, we think we do not matter when in fact we have a large affect on those around us and we have no idea the extent. We often never find out. In the world, our interactions, no matter how minor they seem, have an effect. The butterfly caused the hurricane, but we do not see it directly, we focus on our little part of the life and most of that life passes subconsciously.
My regrets pile is still there, it still grows. I look at it now without condemnation—most of the time. I made decisions good and bad, some I still do not know which side they are on. I did stupid things of consequence (some bother me to this day and always will) and some seem to mean nothing. I know of people in the world I have helped and guided. I know of people in the world I have hurt. My eldest daughter’s go to philosophy is ‘radical acceptance’. Meaning, if I understand it correctly, you go from now, you do not ignore the harm you have suffered or caused, you cannot make it disappear; you can stop it, going forward, from ruining your life or continuing. Regrets need to be like this. There is a ‘silver lining’ to many bad decisions we make. There is no purpose in trying to say, ‘I should have done this’ with facts you did not know at the time. Revisionist History is depressing and unfair. Accept the good and bad and try to do better.
Finally, I want to say we influence everyone we meet. Sometimes as a butterfly and sometimes as their most significant guide. This makes giving up a disservice to humankind. Like the French horn part that is on the off beat we are a crucial but hidden part of the world around us. Analysis, criticism, re-evaluation are not necessarily bad things, they are critical things for self-improvement and a better society. They can also prevent self-improvement and a better society if done too much or in a non-constructive way. The balance of these is hard, the work itself is hard, but we must do it for the greater good. I sum up the work to be done and the effect on my life with this philosophy:
KEEP GOING
Hark 