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She wasn’t made for this life.
Every move had been a mistake, every decision a disaster, every day a retreat from who she’d imagined she’d be.
Swimmer. Musician. Philosopher. Spouse. Traveller. Glaciologist. Happy. Loved.
Nothing.
She couldn’t even manage ‘cat owner’. Or ‘one-hour-a-week piano tutor’. Or ‘human capable of conversation’.
This passage takes place in the chapter “Antimatter,” as Nora judges herself and contemplates taking her own life, and these words illustrate the core of Nora’s darkest thoughts. As she surveys her life through a lens of despair, Nora sees only choices that have led to pain, and she judges her life in terms of failure. Nora’s use of the words “mistake” and “disaster” illustrates that she believes there’s an ideal path for her to take but she’s continually strayed from it. The conviction that there’s some other way she should be living contributes to her pain and regret. Nora develops a different perspective in the Midnight Library and becomes able to look at her choices with grace, equanimity, and self-compassion. She stops blaming herself so harshly and begins to look at the good she provides this world. While this initial dark thinking leads directly to her suicide attempt, the more balanced perspective helps her find a life worth living.
‘I still think my actual life isn’t worth living. In fact, this experience has just managed to confirm that.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think you think that.’
This interaction between Mrs. Elm and Nora happens in “God and Other Librarians,” after Nora has returned from her near-death experience in Svelbard. Nora is still grappling with the realization that she wants very badly to live. The idea is frightening, not just because she doesn’t yet know how to live but also because she recently tried to end her life. So, here, she pushes back against the hard lessons she’s learning and the dawning actualization that her suicide attempt was a mistake. Mrs. Elm, as Nora’s higher self, argues with her dark perspective, insisting that Nora doesn’t truly believe that her life is worthless. This exchange illustrates that Nora’s despairing perspective is lessening its grip on her mind and that it never truly represented how she felt about her life. Despite her actions in her root life, her journey in the Midnight Library illustrates that Nora has always wanted to live.
But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy.
This quote appears in “A Thing I Have Learned (Written By A Nobody Who Has Been Everybody),” when Nora has returned to her root life after her near-death experience in the library and is reflecting on what she has learned from the experience. Once her journey through her alternate lives is complete, Nora comes away from the experience understanding that regret itself is the enemy. In her root life, she originally moved through the world with an armor of regrets and suffered loneliness and despair. She couldn’t see happiness, hope, or the true nature of her connections to those around her. Because “regrets” implied that her present life was a failure, they prevented her from seeing the good in herself, in others, or in the world around her. Here, looking back, she can see that regret was the problem all along, and without it, she feels like she can truly live.
