Finding Peace With Past Choices Through Two Library Novels

We get honest about the midlife “what if” spiral and why it shows up in the most ordinary moments. Two library-centered novels help us see that every choice carries both gifts and losses, and that peace comes from returning to the present. 
• the everyday moments that trigger rumination and second-guessing 
• a personal example of questioning a path not taken 
• how The Midnight Library frames alternate lives and decisions 
• why regret tends to highlight the ups and erase the downs 
• using fiction as a mirror for midlife perspective and self-compassion 
• how The Book of Lost Hours explores time, memory, and sacrifice 
• the danger of quietly rewriting your own history to fit a simpler story 
• seeing past decisions as protection for something you loved 
• the good things inventory as a practical presence exercise 
• resting without a phone as a way to live more fully 
Feel free to head to novelinosh.com. You can join our community, or you can jump on the newsletter where I share a monthly newsletter with information about the books I'm loving, the food I'm eating, any travel if there is any that we go on and how to live more fully. 

Transcript

Welcome And The What If Spiral

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Welcome to Novel and Notch, where book, food, travel, and the art of living fully come together. Have you ever been in a moment, a very boring moment of your life, just holding laundry, doing dishes, uh driving in the car, and you start to do the what-ifs and you think about past decisions you've made throughout your life. And what if you had done this differently, or what if you had done this differently? And this is not meaning that any feeling that you have right now is like the wrong decision. Okay. This is something as minute, I'll give you one example, very minor example for myself. Um, my daughter is in dance, and um I always question when I I danced as a child, and um I got I was in high school, graduated high school, and I had met someone that I ended up giving up my dreams for his dreams, um, and ended up not going straight off to college. I did some college courses online. I know back in the day it was different. It was like you take your books, it was very different. I won't even explain it because it really wasn't an online at that point. It was like sending the test through fax to them, but they were willing to do it for me. Um, so I did it that way. And but I always question like, what if I had gone off to dance in college? Like, how would my life be different? So I'm not talking big decision, I'm talking the minor decisions. Um and I recently read a book that I absolutely loved that kind of had someone go through this. So it is the Midnight Library by Matt Hay. And this kind of situation occurs. And if you've read this book when you were younger, I would encourage you, maybe you didn't like it or who knows. I don't know. Um, but I would encourage you, if you're in this midlife stage, to read it again and see how it lands differently. Because I know a lot of people did not enjoy. Well, I think it's a mixed bag. I think some people love this, some people hate this. Um, and I wonder if the people who didn't like it have not lived enough experiences in life to realize or to um look back at this and feel the same way. I don't know, I'm not expressing this properly. But basically, what the Midnight Library is, is you follow Nora, who is um disappointed with her life, and an opportunity arises where she goes into this library, this middle ground, and she can see um her different lives laid out ahead of her, um, all based on different decisions she made. So, like kind of like the almost like the sliding doors effect, where if you made this decision, this would happen. And if you made this decision, this would happen. And every decision you make will lead you down a slightly different path. And the library that she is in has each book of each different decision she makes. So she once she pulls that book open, she can go live that life to see how her life would be different. And what I enjoyed about the book was because anytime I read a book, I think of myself in that main character's position. And what I loved about that was that every decision she makes, there are good things that come from that decision and bad things that come from that decision. And I think when we think back on our life and we question and we, you know, we think to ourselves, oh, if I had done this differently, oh, if I had gone off to college and danced, how would my life be different? And we put on the rose-colored glasses and we see everything through, like, oh, this could have happened and this could have happened. And, you know, you see all the good that could have come from it, but you never think about the bad things that would also occur because life has ups and downs, and every life and decision you make would have ups and downs. And I think that's one thing we forget when we start to go into our past and think about a different life, is we don't think about the ups. We think of all the ups, we never think of the downs that would also occur. And this book does that beautifully. And I just would encourage you if you haven't read it yet and you're in this midlife stage, I would highly recommend it because I think it does it beautifully. And for me, it gave me peace in I'm right where I'm supposed to be. And like I mentioned, this has nothing to do with like feeling sense of regret about certain decisions I've made. It's just kind of helping me feel at peace with every decision I made led me to where I'm supposed to be right now. And I just felt good about that. And I think it's important to understand that we all have a midnight library that we visit at 2 a.m. when our mind is running and ruminating over everything. The book, it's a great gift. It's showing us that the library is not where we're meant to live. We're meant to live right now in the present, which is a key point for living more fully in life. So I will have you focus on something um this week to help you live more fully that surrounds the Midnight Library. But I also wanted to mention another book that I read right after the Midnight Library that had the same feel. It um was not as philosophical as the Midnight Library, but the feeling was the same. And this book was a five-star book for me, and that is The Book of Lost Hours by Haley Del Susso. And this book explores time, memory, and what we sacrifice to protect those we love. And this takes place where Lisbeth is a young girl trapped in the time space. So, similar to Midnight Library, there's like this in-between space, and this young girl is trapped in it. And it's a library where all memories of the past are stored inside books, and these timekeepers start coming into this library, and they start to destroy memories, destroy um pieces of books, and she wants to save these memories. This is, like I mentioned, very different from the Midnight Library. It is um kind of almost like a historical fiction, definitely time travel aspect. I just thought it was such a good book, so well written and so fun. But I also think of it through the lens of the Midnight Library and this midlife phase, because the timekeepers in this story, like I mentioned, they go in, they destroy memories because they're trying to maintain this preferred version of history. Something doesn't happen to the way they want it to be known, they go back and erase it so that a certain storyline continues through history. And I wonder some sometimes if that is what we may be doing to ourselves, we we're kind of like quietly rewriting our own history. We flatten the hard chapters, we minimize grave decisions we've made, and we tend to only think about the regrets rather than preserving the whole truth. And I just wonder like, is that something you're doing in your own life? Are you noticing everything, all the hard decisions you've made that were positive decisions that helped shaped you into the person you are today? Are you carrying your story through your eyes or what other people have handed to you? Because usually what we all sacrifice is to protect something we love. So decisions you've made along the way were made to protect something. And no matter how you're feeling right now, that is an honorable decision. So if you are a person in this midlife journey and you are feeling this questioning of things, I would encourage you to read both of these books. I think they were both beautifully written. Um, that's the Midnight Library and the Book of Lost Hours, two very different storylines, but there is that that library as a space between past and present. And um, when you think about your own life, realize that just like the library is a space, your past is a space as well that you can visit, but you shouldn't be living in it. Just like history, we have history um to kind of guide us. It's a resource, it's there to help provide us information going forward so we can make the better decision now does not mean that we need to question our past decisions as well. And what these two books do so beautifully is they argue for a return to the present, to the life you're actually in right now. You are not behind, you are not broken, you are a person with a full, complicated, real library of hours. And most of them were braver than you're giving yourself credit for. So, in closing, I always like to give you something to help you live more fully. And this week, so I'm actually going to have you do two things. The first one is it's not a gratitude list, it's the good things inventory, which Nora had to do as well from the Midnight Library. So this is honest, it's small, it's specific. It does not need to be, like I said, a gratitude. It's a pleasure inventory, the smell of your morning coffee, particular light in your kitchen at 6 p.m. The song that always does something to you. Write five, no more. Just things that you are finding pleasure in right now. You can do it right now if you want. You can pick a time this week and just sit down and write five things that you're finding pleasure in right now. Does not need to be something you're grateful for, just something specific. And then rest like it counts. Both books ultimately argue that rest, stillness, and presence are not laziness. They're how we consolidate everything we've lived. So you're going to give yourself one unscheduled stretch of time this weekend. Don't worry about the amount of time. It doesn't have to be like this is my 10 minutes of meditation. It doesn't have to be anything like that. Don't call it anything, but let it be something. Spend a few minutes resting, not with your phone, not with anything specific, just resting, resting your mind, resting your body, and being present. And then feel free to head to novelinosh.com. You can join our community, or you can jump on the newsletter where I share a monthly newsletter with information about the books I'm loving, the food I'm eating, any travel if there is any that we go on and how to live more fully.