PASTOR DAVE’S MUSINGS FROM THE HEARTLAND

May 8, 2022

THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY (Part I)

                All of us have regrets from the past.  There are words that we wish we could take back or state differently.  There are things we have done that we would like to do over or just completely eliminate.  There are things that we wish we would have done.  In Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library (Viking, 2020) Nora Seed’s regrets have grown to such a proportion that she had decided to take her life.

Following her suicide attempt Nora awakes to find herself hovering between life and death.  Her wanderings lead her to a library which contains all of her past regrets as well as possible other outcomes for her life.  Mrs. Elm, the librarian and a good friend from her growing up, tells her: “Every life contains many millions of decisions.  Some big, some small.  But every time one decision is taken over another, the outcomes differ.  An irreversible variation occurs, which in turn leads to further variations.” (The Midnight Library, p. 256)  Nora has been given the opportunity to explore other possible scripts for her life.

Many years ago I read a most interesting short story by Mark Twain, “The Mysterious Stranger.”  One day a complete stranger appears in town.  He becomes a friend of the local children.  The stranger has the ability to change the timing of events.  He can make an event happen a little latter or a little sooner, thus, changing the outcome.

The children had two friends who died when one, a boy, tried to save another, a girl, as she was drowning.  The children ask if the stranger could change the outcome by changing the timing of the events.  He tells them he can have the boy hear the cry a little sooner, thus, allowing him to respond quicker and save the girl.  However, he goes on to say that if he does the boy will grow up to be a murderer that will be executed and the girl will become a prostitute.  Do they still want to make the change?

It is natural to assume that if we could change the past the results would be better.  In fact they could be much worse.  Nora Seed discovers that many of the possible alternative outcomes for her life have consequences that she finds unacceptable.  In one of her possible lives she goes through with the marriage that she backed out of at the last moment.  It turns out to be an utter disaster.  In another possible life one of her good friends dies in a car crash.  In still another, her brother dies of an overdose as a result of a serious drinking and drug problems.

In the Parable of the Prodigal Son the younger brother leaves home because he thinks the grass is greener somewhere else.  His choice has disastrous results. “When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need.  So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs.” (Luke 15:14, 15)  He realizes too late it would have been much better for him to have never left home.  A choice that seemed so attractive in the end was anything but.

We all have regrets from the past and spend time thinking of what we might have done differently.  It is easy to make the assumption that things would have gone better if we would have made a different choice.  They might or they might not have.  There is no way we will ever know.  All we know for sure is what is.