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‘If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you.'
This quote is from a Ted Talk that Nora the Olympian gives in “The Successful Life.” Ironically, as Nora watches the video of this talk, she wonders who Nora the Olympian is, and how someone who had the same life’s beginning could be so vastly different from who Nora knows herself to be. Though Nora the Olympian and root-life Nora are completely different people, Nora often holds herself to standards that are more suited to an Olympic swimmer and berates herself for not being successful, often using other people’s definitions of success to measure her life. Much of the despair that Nora experiences before she tries to end her life stems from her attempts to be someone she isn’t. After being lost in the dreams of the people she loves, Nora fails again and again because she loses herself. Through her journey in the Midnight Library, Nora systematically lets go of the dreams of others, rediscovers herself, and begins to live as the truest version of herself.
‘I just don’t understand life,’ sulked Nora.
‘You don’t have to understand life. You just have to live it.’
Nora shook her head. This was a bit too much for a Philosophy graduate to take.
This quote takes place in “Lost in the Library,” when Nora returns to the Midnight Library after visiting hundreds of versions of her life and feels like she doesn’t know who she is. Nora’s orientation to the world is often cerebral. Twice in the book, when she’s accused of overthinking, she responds that she has no other kind of thinking available. Nora has lived much of her life trying to make sense of the world. In the Midnight Library, she finds herself in a metaphysical situation that strains her ability to reason. Familiar patterns of rational thinking, her own self-perception, and even conventional laws of physics are all called into question, expanded, and turned on their heads. After all her thinking leaves her lost and confused, Mrs. Elm and even life itself challenge Nora to focus on actually living instead of merely thinking about living. This path leads her to discover a more meaningful life.
We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. …
We only need to be one person.
We only need to feel one existence.
We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite.
This quote appears in “A Thing I Have Learned (Written By A Nobody Who Has Been Everybody),” after Nora has returned from her near-death experience and is reflecting on what she has learned from her journey through the library. After visiting hundreds of versions of her life, Nora realizes that she always had everything she needed to be satisfied and content. Before the Midnight Library, she was motivated by her need for worldly success, pleasing others, and living by other people’s dreams. Her failure to achieve these things inspired such regret and self-betrayal that it drove her to the brink of death. But, afterward recovering from her suicide attempt, she realizes that she doesn’t need those extrinsic validations or any external markers of a good life. She learns that the true path to satisfaction comes from fully living, accepting, and being present for the life one is given.
