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In her root life, Nora Seed is consumed with regret, self-blame, and self-criticism because she evaluates her life based on external rubrics and rigid definitions of success. She carries a laundry list of her failures with her and often focuses on how she’s let others down, how she should have made different choices, and how she compares to others in her life. As a result, Nora is often at war with herself and sees herself as the cause of misery, responsible for her own and others’ suffering. Through this lens of despair, Nora sees no other way to grapple with her life than to end it. But, as her name suggests, Nora’s life is not over, and she embarks on a quest to understand her full potential, to understand what she still might grow into.
As she journeys through the alternate lives within the Midnight Library, Nora begins to let go of her regrets and self-recrimination by seeing that life is not as simple or predictable as she imagined it to be. For example, though she had been regretting leaving her fiancé Dan and interpreting the decision as a personal failure, she learns that they both would have been unhappy if they had stayed together. Similarly, she learns that there is no world in which her cat could’ have lived, no matter how well she took care of him, and that, if she had gone with her best friend Izzy to Australia like she’d planned, Izzy would have died. Seeing that life is filled with both unpredictable outcomes and myriad possibilities, Nora frees herself from unyielding definitions of success and searches instead for the most meaningful path. By opening her heart to the experience of being alive, honoring the good impact she has on those nearest to her, and understanding the importance of small acts of kindness, Nora discovers that the meaningful life is one filled not with achievements or accolades, but with love and connection.
