Finding Your Way Back to Yourself: What If You Could Choose Again?

A reflection inspired by Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library

How often do we wonder what our lives might have looked like if we had made a different choice?

A different career.

A different relationship.

A different city.

A different decision at a moment when everything seemed uncertain.

Most of us carry some version of these questions. We look back at choices we made and wonder what might have happened if we had turned left instead of right.

Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library takes that familiar human question and turns it into a story.

As we explore this month’s theme, Finding Your Way Back to Yourself, the novel offers an interesting invitation: rather than endlessly imagining the lives we might have lived, what can those imagined possibilities teach us about the life we are living now?

A Library Filled With Other Possibilities

In The Midnight Library, Nora Seed finds herself in a mysterious library between life and death. The books on its shelves contain different versions of her life—lives that might have existed if she had made different choices.

The premise allows Nora to experience possibilities that once seemed out of reach.

What if she had pursued another career?

What if she had stayed in a particular relationship?

What if she had made different decisions?

The novel uses these possibilities to explore regret, choice, disappointment, and the search for a meaningful life. Goodreads describes the central premise around the possibility of exploring the lives we might have lived if we had made different choices. (“goodreads.com” (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51955934-the-midnight-library?utm_source=chatgpt.com))

It is a fantastical idea, but the questions underneath it are familiar.

The Lives We Imagine

Regret can be complicated.

Sometimes it teaches us something.

Sometimes it keeps us looking backward.

We may imagine that another version of our life would have been happier, easier, or more successful. But how much can we really know about a life we never lived?

The novel invites readers to sit with that uncertainty.

A different choice does not necessarily create a perfect life.

A different path comes with its own circumstances, relationships, disappointments, and unexpected difficulties.

This can be an interesting point of reflection when we think about our own stories.

Perhaps the life we imagine we should have lived is based on only one small piece of information—the choice we wish we had made.

We rarely imagine everything that might have come with it.

What Readers See in the Story

The Midnight Library has reached a remarkably large readership. Goodreads currently lists more than 2.6 million ratings and 265,000 reviews, with an overall rating of approximately 3.97 out of 5. The novel also received the 2020 Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction. (“goodreads.com” (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51955934-the-midnight-library?utm_source=chatgpt.com))

But readers do not respond to the novel in exactly the same way.

Some Goodreads readers describe it as emotional, imaginative, and thought-provoking. Others feel that its philosophical messages are too direct or that the story sometimes moves toward a more self-help-like message. (“goodreads.com” (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51955934-the-midnight-library?utm_source=chatgpt.com))

That range of responses is worth acknowledging.

Bibliotherapy does not require every reader to have the same reaction to a book.

Our response to a book can itself become part of the reflection.

What resonates with one person may not resonate with another.

What feels profound to one reader may feel overly simple to someone else.

The question becomes less about whether a book is universally meaningful and more about what we discover in our own encounter with it.

Finding Yourself in the Life You Have

One of the most interesting questions raised by The Midnight Library is whether finding yourself means finding a different life.

Perhaps it does not.

Perhaps it means becoming more attentive to the life already in front of you.

There may be things you genuinely want to change.

There may be dreams worth revisiting.

There may be relationships or expectations that no longer fit.

But there may also be things in your current life that you have overlooked because you have been comparing them with an imagined alternative.

The novel gives Nora the opportunity to look at possibilities.

Reading gives us a different opportunity: the chance to look at our own lives with fresh attention.

When “What If?” Becomes “What Now?”

There is nothing wrong with wondering about the past.

Sometimes what if? helps us understand what mattered to us.

If we regret not pursuing something, perhaps the regret tells us that the desire still matters.

If we miss someone, perhaps the feeling tells us something about connection.

If we wish we had spoken up, perhaps that realization can influence how we communicate in the future.

The important shift may be from endlessly revisiting the past to asking what we can learn from it.

What does this regret tell me about what I value now?

What does this imagined life reveal about the life I want to build?

What can I do with that understanding today?

These are not questions that a novel can answer for us.

But a novel can give us somewhere to begin asking them.

Reading as a Mirror

This is where The Midnight Library can become interesting through a bibliotherapeutic lens.

We do not have to treat the novel as a guide to living.

Instead, we can allow it to become a mirror.

Perhaps it reminds us of a choice we still think about.

Perhaps it makes us reconsider what we define as success.

Perhaps it brings attention to the difference between the life we thought we wanted and the life that actually feels meaningful.

Or perhaps we simply enjoy the story without seeing ourselves in it at all.

All of these responses are possible.

Reading is personal.

Sometimes the most useful question after finishing a book is not:

“What was the author trying to teach me?”

but:

“What did this story make me notice about myself?”

A Reflection for the Month

As you explore Finding Your Way Back to Yourself, consider:

What “what if” question do I return to most often?

What does that question tell me about what I value?

Is there something from an imagined version of my life that I can bring into the life I am living now?

And perhaps:

What would I notice if I stopped asking whether I chose the perfect life and started asking what matters to me in the life I have?

There is no need to answer immediately.

Sometimes a question is enough to begin a conversation with ourselves.

Finding Your Way Back

We cannot go back and live every possible version of our lives.

But we can learn from the versions we imagine.

We can listen to our regrets without allowing them to define us.

We can recognize the choices that still matter.

And we can become curious about the life that is unfolding now.

Perhaps finding your way back to yourself is not about discovering the person you would have been if everything had gone differently.

Perhaps it is about becoming more present to the person you are becoming.

Sometimes, the way forward begins by making peace with the paths we did not take—and paying closer attention to the one we are walking now.

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Disclaimer

Bibliotherapy is not intended to substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, medical treatment, medication, or therapy. Always seek the advice of a physician or qualified mental health professional with questions regarding a mental health symptom or medical condition. Bibliotherapy should not be used to make recommendations about medication or as a substitute for professional care. Never disregard professional medical or psychological advice or delay seeking professional advice or treatment because of something you have read through bibliotherapy.