PASTOR DAVE’S MUSINGS FROM THE HEARTLAND

May 15, 2022

THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY (Part II)

After experiencing a number of possible outcomes for her life, Nora Reed in Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library (Viking, 2020) sticks with the one she has lead.  However, she has learned an important lesson.  “It is quite a revelation to discover that the place you wanted to escape to is the exact same place you escaped from.  That the prison wasn’t the place, but the perspective.  And the most peculiar discovery Nora made was that of all the extremely divergent variations of herself she had experienced, the most radical sense of change happened within the exact same life.  The one she began and ended with.” (The Midnight Library, p. 284)

As a result of her new perspective Nora now saw her life not as a dead end street but as one with potential and possibility. “She had to try harder.  She had to want the life she always thought she didn’t.  Because just as this library was a part of her, so too were all the other lives.  She might not have felt everything she had felt in those lives, but she had the capability.  She might have missed those particular opportunities that led her to become an Olympic swimmer, or a traveler, or a vineyard owner, or a rock star, or a planet-saving glaciologist, or a Cambridge graduate, or a mother, or the million other things, but she was still in some way all those people.  They were all her.  She could have been all those amazing things, and that wasn’t depressing, as she had once thought.  Not at all.  It was inspiring.  Because now she saw the kinds of things she could do when she put herself to work.  And that, actually, the life she had been living had its own logic to it.  Her brother was alive.  Izzy was alive.  And she had helped a young boy stay out of trouble.  What sometimes feels like a trap is actually just a trick of the mind.  She didn’t need a vineyard or a California sunset to be happy.  She didn’t even need a large house and the perfect family.  She just needed potential.  And she was nothing if not potential.  She wondered why she had never seen it before.” (The Midnight Library, p. 269)

                Many years ago I had two women who had the same surgery, in the same hospital, by the same doctor and were in the same room.  When I visited one of the persons all she could do was complain about her stay.  She was unhappy with everything.  When I visited the other person she was very enthusiastic about the quality of the care she had received and how attentive the staff was.  The first person was in the hospital for a month, the second two weeks.  As near as I could tell the only difference to account for the differences in length of stays were the persons’ perspectives.

We live in a time when political discourse on current events is done from the perspective of standard talking points.  No matter the issue at hand, comments stick to the talking points.  Such perspectives have more to do with emotions and passions than they have to do with logic and reason.  A guiding principle would seem to be “not” what the other side thinks.  Unfortunately, such reasoning on all sides can lead to actions that are destructive and harmful.

                On his way to Damascus to persecute Christians the Apostle Paul had a change of perspective.  His confrontation with the risen Christ transformed him, with the exception of Jesus himself, into the most important person in the New Testament.  His new perspective allowed him to be content in whatever circumstances he found himself. “For I have learned to be content with whatever I have.  I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty.  In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need.  I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” (Phil. 4:11b-12)

Two persons with very different perspectives can unpack the same event in drastically different ways.  There are those who see the bottle half-filled and those who see it half-empty.  One’s perspective has a great deal to do with how one experiences life.  Some are primarily positive and up-beat while others are primarily negative and down-beat.  As by the example given above our perspective, can affect our physical, psychological, spiritual and relational life.