Marcia's Musings: A Visit to the Midnight Library
/By Marcia Appel — Last Updated: September 3, 2025
A book I am currently reading, The Midnight Librarian by Matt Haig, posits a jaw-dropping, mind-changing theory: that making life choices includes not only the ones we selected but also the ones we rejected. This well-structured novel starts slowly, and I considered setting it aside after the first twenty pages, even though the writer in me chafes at the idea of abandoning someone’s arduous work.
Once you get through the setup, though, it reels you in because along the way you cannot help but examine both your own select and reject piles. It is at that moment that the powerful linkage of two simple, small words – “what” and “if” - rattles the cage. What if? Haig’s exploration of alternate lives prompted me to ponder my choices and confront my own “what ifs.”
What if I had chosen Smith College over Iowa State University? What if I had said no instead of yes to the offer of marriage at age nineteen? What if I had planted my feet in the field of journalism for another eleven years rather than moving into the glitz, glamour, rigor, and sometimes pain of the corporate world after the first dozen? What if I had not married a second time? What if I had started another magazine at age 57 instead of opening Green Lotus - now in the capable, strong hands of MB? What if?
The arc of a novel often bends and twists rather than curving perfectly. The surprise ending or abrupt shift in tone, from the romantic to the caustic or from the dramatic to the humorous, for example, can shock me, and it also can send me in new directions of inquiry and revelation. How like life, I thought, as the chapters of The Midnight Library whispered or thundered. As I watched Haig’s main character, Nora, feel her way through each rejected choice, I paused to ponder my own. Could I have acted more bravely or risked more freely? Could I have expended more effort or, conversely, eased back into comfort before leaping?
And then my ultimate query: Would one change in my choices have triggered a chain reaction to upend the life I now cherish? No children or grandchildren? Fewer unsettling experiences and therefore fewer opportunities to learn and grow? Less time with my parents, aunts and uncles, and cousins? My life unanchored by long, rich friendships, decades in the making and mindfully nurtured? Less time spent as a nomad in the world? No Green Lotus, which opened my body, mind, and spirit to new physical, emotional, and spiritual paths that created such joy in my life?
And to not have known so many of you, talked with you, learned with you, stood in poses with you, cried and laughed with you, traveled with you? The very thought of this fills me with sadness and a deep sense of loss, dear readers.
It is easy, I think, to conclude that selecting other choices would have made our lives even better or worse. Unlike Nora, we cannot visit a midnight library that contains the volumes of our alternate lives built on different choices. As I continued to turn the novel’s pages, I wondered: Is there beauty in the acceptance of life as it has been lived rather than constantly debating the “what ifs”? In the vast continuum of a single life, melded as it is into the tapestry of history and the universe, can we rest into awareness itself, a principal process of Yoga Nidra? Is there resonance in taking what we have learned and gently mixing it into our future choices? Can we become artists of our lives, painting on the new blank canvas by dipping our proverbial brushes into pots of experience to create the next masterpiece?
I have shared with many of you my decades-long spiritual quest which ended in peace by taking just one yoga class in Seattle 30-some years ago. I’ll never forget it. At the end of a 90-minute session that flowed with rigor and rest, the teacher released us with these simple words: “Leave now knowing the God of light already resides within.” My eyes sprang open as these words sped through my mind: “That’s it!” I have rested, and created, in that safe space ever since. What if, though, I hadn’t developed a yoga practice, hadn’t taken teacher training, hadn’t gone to that one class?
I understand now, and perhaps this is trite, that life is a dance of changing tunes of joy, sadness, ecstasy, disappointment, love, grief, beginnings, endings, and everything in between. And I have come to feel that the power of acceptance in these musings, rather than having regrets, fuels the discovery of peace.
May it always be so for me and for you, chapter after chapter.
Postscript: Yoga became a tenet of my life some quarter-of-a-century ago. It helped me understand in a new way both my roots and my trajectory. In nearly eighteen years of Green Lotus, I have observed that stepping onto the yoga path provides richness to most lives and a sense of belonging. I encourage you to take advantage of this fall’s new-student offer. If you already have a practice with us, then please share this news with others. Thank you.
