The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

​The Gen Z Paulo Coelho. A short, readable little book full of the most valuable philosophical insights about life and regrets. We all wish we could’ve lived the lives where we had made different choices, and I think Matt Haig did a wonderful job in taking that desire away. Because the truth is, we don’t know if those lives would’ve panned out better or even worse than the life we’re living right now. And no life comes with zero problems. Even if we had amended one mistake, perhaps a bigger one would’ve come in our way in a different form. Besides, there is no way we can actually get to live those lives, so we really do have to just make the most of this current one. 

 

​At some point Haig brings up the concept of generational trauma. Disappointment passed down in the DNA. I was so glad that he did that. Because we do hold our parents’ trauma within us, even our grandparents’ trauma. What they have been through is etched in our DNA, and as long as we’re not aware of it and take no steps to break generational trauma, it will keep getting passed down, and our own progeny will keep suffering as we have, and as our parents have before us, and as their parents have before them. Until we heal, our future generation will suffer. But there is so much work that comes with healing generational trauma. It involves taking responsibility for a pain that was caused to us. A pain we never asked for, a pain we did nothing to deserve. And it’s hard to forgive those who inflicted this pain on us, even though maybe perhaps they weren’t at fault either. They just didn’t know better. But taking responsibility for your own healing, even when you didn’t deserve the wounds, is the most noble thing you could do as a human being, for yourself and your children. And their children. And theirs. 

 

​This book was overall charming. There were little bouts of eh, I don’t quite like this, of course, but I think it was a necessary book, to read and to have and to think about. There are a lot of life lessons within it that are merely grazed over but which hold so much depth, so much wisdom, that it would change our lives for the better if we really sat down with them.

Thank you @AM for recommending this book, it was a beautiful journey.

Toodles x