Framework to Deal with Regret — Inspired by The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Thoughts on The Midnight Library
‘Have you read this book? Will you please read this book?’ Yes, I am that painful person who will want everyone to read the book I have just read. Needless to say, I did the same with ‘The Midnight Library’ by Matt Haig.
The book revolves around Nora, a woman in her mid-thirties dealing with depression and suicidal tendencies. On ending her life, she reaches a place between life and death in the form of a library. This midnight library has books that are portals to lives that Nora could have lived had she taken different decisions at various points in her life.
Every chapter tells the story of Nora visiting the lives that she regretted not living and undoing her regrets. This gives an episodic feel to the entire novel, which keeps you going. It is one of those books which genuinely tries to help you and shows you, that you are not alone in questioning the meaninglessness and burdens of human existence and thinking about the ‘what ifs…’.
The book for me was an enjoyable and relatable read, though it can be triggering for some people. At the deepest layer, it seemed like the author is redeeming himself of his own regrets and offering us all a chance at it too.
On a critical look, the book was painfully obvious, and there was nothing that surprised me. The author also tried to take a dip into the plausible scientific reasoning for the existence of time travel and multiverse by talking briefly about Schrodinger’s equation, which was frivolous.
Anyway, beyond this, it will not be a book review. Clearly, we won’t get to live our alternate realities to undo our regrets. What it really made me think about is how to deal with regret in THIS life.
Framework for Regret
Regret is as dangerous as cancer. It is emotional cancer. It is worse because it cannot be detected or measured. It is that cold that won’t leave you.
There are often opportunities we decide to give up on or decisions we take that later develop as regret. This regret keeps growing until time makes us forget it, and if we are unlucky, maybe even time can’t help.
But the glaring loophole here is that you actually don’t know how your life would have been if you had taken the paths that you did not in this life. You can never know. No one can. Only the version of you in the parallel dimension who actually took that decision will know, but you will never be aware of them unlike Nora in The Midnight Library (or you might if inter-dimensional space travel is invented — never say never?!)
The reality stays the same, so what can you do now? How can you think? You can get surgery and remove particular regrets from your brain (like in the movie Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind) or change your mindset by building a new mental model to deal with it. Let's go with the second option and avoid brain surgeries, please! Our mind is like clay and you can either choose to model it in a way that helps you or choose to take a bubble bath with ‘regret’ scented body wash every day.
Perceptions can be molded, resilience can be built, and mental models can be developed to look at situations in life differently. So we’ll build a new mental model. A way to think and deal with regret. A new thought process…
The interesting thing about life is that you are like a tiny speck of dust in this really unfathomable universe, a gooey amalgamation of cells that come together to form your body for a brief time on earth. There is only one mind and one life that you can inhabit. And that life is yours. You are incapable of witnessing anybody else’s thoughts or life. You are the only one who can know what you feel, what you think, what you value. That is the only ice-cream flavor available, your only truth to work with, and hence the only framework to build this mental model upon. So that is all we have to start with and then reconstruct.
The Test
Imagine observing your current life as a 3rd person, as someone who is floating around in the cosmos and witnessing another person supplanted in your life, living in the same conditions, experiencing the same things. Basically, see your life being experienced by someone else. Detach yourself and forget that it was you. Just think it is somebody else’s life and you just happen to observe it as an invisible being.
Look at this person’s life and think about him/her. Look at the good and bad experiences and everything that is happening to this person. From the people they meet to every birthday, farewell they attend to every place they live in to the love they receive, the angst they go through. How do you feel when you imagine and see someone else live your exact life experiences? Would you want to be the third person not experiencing that life? Are you okay missing all that? And giving it all up? Are you jealous of that person? Ask all these questions.
The answers can be both ways. If you are not ready to give up those experiences, then there is actually nothing to regret and you are where you are because you were meant to be there. And what has happened is only going to add up to what you want, and it is really all fine.
If you feel that you could give up those experiences and want a different life from what you experienced, it is time to think about the exact decisions that brought you to this current point in your journey. The simplest way to start is by asking can you correct those decisions now? Whether it was about pursuing an interest, mending relationships, learning something new, starting a company, etc., can you do all that now?
2 things can happen here. Either it is too late to make those decisions or just the simple fact that you’ll make those decisions later than you would have wanted.
If you can still make the same decision, but a little late, well then good for you. What somebody got today, you’ll get tomorrow. What happened to you today might happen to someone later. And if you are still unconvinced, Herman Hesse explains it beautifully in his book Siddhartha.
If both the above things are not valid and you are at a point where you can’t make that same decision in present, then think about why you wanted to make that decision and what was the result, the consequence you desired. Now think about other means of reaching that end result. And start doing that instead. There are very few places that only have one way. You can reach the same place through various paths.
Whenever I feel disconnected and unhappy with the situations, I am in and regret making certain decisions; I imagine myself as some third person seeing someone else living my life. In most cases, I think ‘Woah she truly has so much love in her life, so much she has learned and I feel greedy to not give up being that girl.’ However much I complain, the thought of not having the opportunity to live my current life scares me, takes away any regrets and ‘what ifs’, and fills me with gratitude.
The Climb
We’ll get a little philosophical now. Life decisions are like choosing to trek a mountain in an area with infinite mountains. Millions have climbed these mountains before you and millions will do it after you. Often you might feel that once you have started a climb, it is difficult to change that. But in most cases, you will be able to get down and start another one. At times you’ll see people climbing up on your way down and feel like there is something wrong with what you are doing. That’ll be difficult. Being in reverse will seem like a failure. But you are just walking your own path. It’ll be okay when you start climbing another one again. You are neither late nor early. The important thing was to finally enjoy a climb.
There are millions of mountains to climb, and there are millions of pathways to reach the top of whatever mountain you want to climb. Some paths will be traveled a lot so they’ll be easy and some you’ll have to create so that others can follow you. In some paths you’ll be a leader of a pack, in some, you might be a lone wanderer and feel lost.
But going through the sweat and climbing a mountain is all that matters. And if one wants to put their tent at the foothill and never climb a mountain, that’s fine too.
As Ms. Miley Cyrus tells us
‘Ain’t about how fast I get there
Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side
It’s the climb’
