After Reading Midnight Library

Not long ago, I received the book Midnight Library by Matt Haig, a gift from a friend in the neighborhood. After reading the book, I found myself shedding many tears. Although some may have already read it, I wanted to share a portion of the book’s ending with the Harmony Meditation community.

Many thanks to the author as well as the friend who introduced this book.

“It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we developed other talents. Said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia and said yes to the coffee, or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make, and the work we didn’t do, and the people we didn’t marry, and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting ad infinitum until our time runs out. But it is not the lives we regret not living, but of the real problem. It is the regret itself. It is the regret that makes us shrivel and wither, and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy. We can’t tell if any of those other versions would’ve been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well. And that is the happening we have to focus on.”

                                                                                              – Matt Haig –

Truthfully, I first want to express gratitude to my teacher. When I began to learn at Harmony Meditation, he showed me the influence that regret has on my life. Guiding me through continued learning, he allows me to experience precious moments of insight and healing, both big and small. As a result, I‘ve had moments of profound gratitude for the existence of my self.

Even though I still have a long journey ahead and face challenging moments against formidable walls, I hope to let go of desire and walk forward embracing gratitude.