Welcome to October, the next book on our one week journey is the midnight library by Matt Haig. 

I would just like to state that if you are struggling with depression, suicidal thoughts and your self esteem then this is a book that you should absolutely read. 

Trigger warning there will be mentions of suicide, depression, drug overdose and much more in the preceding paragraphs. 

Summary of midnight library by Matt Haig. 

The entire premise of the book is that in between life and death there is a library and on the shelves that go on for miles and miles there are books. 

Each book contains the story of a life you could have lived differently simply by changing on a decision you made. 

Essentially how one single seemingly small choice made can change your entire life. 

The book opens with this woman and a countdown to when she plans to commit suicide. 

I immediately think it’s a bluff and she won’t do it but the time reached zero, she did. She overdosed on her anti depressant medications.

So now she’s at this library faced with an infinite amount of lives to live albeit there are rules. 

And this book just kept me on the edge of my seat. I read it in the span of 2 days because I was so eager to see what would happen next until I got to the last sentence. 

Lessons to be learnt from the Midnight Library.

• Change your perspective not your surrounding: 

It’s easy to think your environment is the issue. Oh the country you live in, Oh the neighbourhood, Oh the people… the list is endless. 

But oftentimes the environment is the same regardless what needs to change is your perspective. 

They say to the optimist the glass is half full and to the pessimist the glass is half empty. However there is water in the cup so drink that shit and don’t complain. 

The character in the midnight library was seemingly unhappy with everything and everyone. She couldn’t see the reason to keep living, she neglected the little things. 

When faced with other choices of the burdens others carry, you’ll be surprised just how quickly you’ll still choose to carry your burdens.

Change your perspective first. When faced with your life and all the choices you could have made differently you might just find that you’ll wish to change nothing. 

• Never ponder on your regrets because you can’t tell how those would have turned out:

Regret is the one baggage that follows everyone around. We regret even the little choices we made but those don’t weigh us down as heavy as the big regrets we carry around. 

I wish I had chosen a different career, I wish I had made better decisions with my money, I wish I had gone to the gym, I wish I was famous, … I wish and wish

We see the life we currently live in as mediocre in comparison to the lives we could have lived. Well our protagonist was presented with that option of righting her wrongs. 

And you know what she found? 

Even while living those different lives, she battled depression. In the first few lives she lived, she had a bottle of antidepressant just like she did in her regular life. 

She came to realize that some of the regrets she had were baseless. An example would be her regret for not marrying her boyfriend who she thought was great. 

She wished for a life where she had married him and you know what happened if she had married him? 

He would have later gone on to fall out of love with her and cheat on her. 

She regretted not moving cross country with her friend but if she had done that, her friend would have later gone on to be involved in a car accident and died. 

There were multiple lives, some in which this same boyfriend was begging her to marry him, some in which her best friend was alive and some where she was dead… the variations were limitless. 

Don’t let your regrets weigh down on you, if there’s still time to change it then change it and if not, accept it, forgive yourself and move on.

You only have One Life, just one so live it. 

Stealing a Quote from the book, 

“Life is about living it.” 

Don’t be bothered by trying to understand it or make the best of it, just live each day.