[BOOK REVIEW The Midnight Library] What If You Could Fix Your Past Mistakes?

Learning the Meaning of Life Through the Novel The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Sumber: Dokumen Pribadi

Have you ever wondered how your life would be if you had chosen a different path? Do you think your life would be better if you could do it? Or have you ever felt dissatisfied with who you are in this world? Perhaps those questions are frequently asked by you, including me. However, there is no guarantee that if you could choose your path and fix your mistakes, your life would be happy. Just like what happened to Nora Seed, who had taken an "adventure" in her other life.

Nora Seed, a 35-year-old woman who lives in Bedford, once aspired to be a glaciologist but ended up working in a String Theory music store. She suffers from anxiety, which necessitated the use of antidepressants. One day, she got fired from his job and the other part-time job, and as a result, she became unemployed. At this point, she began to consider what her life might be like if she became a glaciologist, what her life could be if she moved to Australia with her best friend, what her life could be if she didn't stop swimming like her father wanted, and the other 'what ifs.' Eventually, he decided to end her life by taking some antidepressant pills with a glass of wine. She began unconscious, but afterwards she found herself in the library.

"The Midnight Library" is what Nora called it. This library isn't an ordinary library, it can take Nora to another her life. This library has a large number of books, and each book consists of Nora's regrets as long as she lived. If she opened the book, she would go down a different path in her life, one she had not chosen when she was alive. She tried many of them during her time in the library. However, all of the lives she lived didn't make her happy for a long time, there must be a problem. As when she led a life where she got married with her ex-boyfriend, who was really kind to her in one life but arrogant in the other. Or when she succeeds in the other life, but her dad or her brother have passed away.

Matt Hag's The Midnight Library has won the Goodreads Choice Awards for Best Fiction for 2020. Overall, this book is awesome, with a modest story that we always encounter in our daily lives, so it makes this book remarkable. However, because we jump from one of Nora's stories to the next, the reader may become bored. In this book, we haven't found out the suspenseful story or the unexpected plot twist, yet we can find out a lot about the meaning of life.

This book encourages us to think about life and to appreciate ourselves. We have been trying to live as well as we can. Because there are no truly perfect options, simply wanting to live and survive in this world is more than enough. You must live to understand the possible outcomes of your life. There are so many possibilities for good or bad out there that you can experience them when you're alive.

You don't have to be someone else to fulfil someone's expectations, just be yourself and do what you want. You are unique, and you have something special within yourself.

Sometimes we overlook the little things and assume they're nothing. But in fact, a little thing can have a big impact on your choice. One decision has consequences that may never be changed again, and it will bring new choices and new decisions.

Life is full of uncertainty, sometimes we spend too much time worrying about the outcomes and become disappointed when our choices don't produce the outcomes we had in mind. If we question why something could have happened and focus on things that don't live up to our expectations, we will simply feel depressed and worried. Every life must have gaps. So, all we have to do is express gratitude and draw lessons from the past, because a difficult life feels lighter when you are grateful.

Nora is a person like us whose life was probably in crisis and who believed that if we were given the chance to live based on the decisions we hadn't previously made, everything would be better. Because of this, we continue to feel depressed and guilty about our prior choices. Sadness is a part of happiness. If we have never felt sadness, we will not understand what happiness is. We can see from this that can be positive things behind something that is viewed negatively.

We can be more aware of mental health from this book as well. Whether or not someone's mental health has an impact on how they behave, think, and interact with others. Positivity comes from having a healthy mind, and a person with good mental health will also act and think properly.