Dear Nora Seed: What If You Didn't Have to Learn a Lesson?
I finished my review of The Midnight Library and sat with my journal the next morning. I wished someone had been more patient with Nora before she started converting every experience into lessons. So I wrote her a letter, because sometimes the most honest way to examine what a book gets wrong is to offer what it couldn't give its protagonist.
What follows isn't literary criticism. It's what I would have said if I'd found Nora in that library before Mrs. Elm began her guidance, and before the infinite possibility collapsed into the single acceptable interpretation.
Dear Nora,
I'm writing to you in the library, before Mrs. Elm convinces you that every book you open must teach you something about your root life. Before you start mining each experience for its lesson. While you're still standing there, surrounded by infinite possibility, and the pressure to choose correctly hasn't yet collapsed that possibility into a single acceptable interpretation.
Nora, I've kept a journal for about thirty years. Most mornings, I sit with what emerges without immediately converting it into meaning. Some days yield patterns. Most days don't. The practice itself is the point. That sustained attention, the willingness to witness what is rather than what should be. I'm writing to tell you that this is enough. That witness attention without productive outcomes is a valid way to exist.
They're going to tell you the black hole was wrong imagery. That you need to become a volcano instead. Someone generative, fertile, productive. But, Nora, you don't have to optimise your internal metaphors. You're allowed to be imploding. You're allowed to stay there and see what that feels like without immediately reframing it as a learning opportunity.
Mrs. Elm is kind. I believe that. But kindness doesn't have to come packaged as curriculum. When she quotes Thoreau to you—"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see"—she's going to follow it immediately with instructions on what you should see. But Thoreau didn't mean "here's the correct perception." He meant: pay attention to how you're paying attention. Notice what your particular quality of presence reveals. And then—and this is crucial—don't immediately convert that noticing into a framework for living better.
You're going to meet Hugo. He'll love moving through lives, exploring without needing to land anywhere, curious about possibility for its own sake. They'll present him as a cautionary tale. As someone who can't commit, can't settle, can't do the real work of living one life well. But what if Hugo understands something Haig won't let him articulate? What if genuine philosophical inquiry requires exactly that kind of wandering. Patient, unresolved, willing to remain in questions?
I know what they're going to tell you: that your root life in Bedford is enough once you learn to perceive it correctly. That the problem was never your actual circumstances but your mindset. That small acts of kindness and better perception will make everything meaningful. And maybe that's true. Maybe Bedford is enough. But not because you've completed the curriculum. Not because you've learned the correct way to see. Bedford might be enough simply because it's where you are. Being where you are, and witnessing it without the pressure to extract meaning or demonstrate growth is a form of participation in being.
Most things don't resolve. Most attention doesn't yield insight. Most days are just days. And somehow, that's not a failure. That's what it means to be alive. To keep showing up to witness without knowing what it's for, without needing it to be for anything.
The library is offering you something rare: liminal space, suspended time, infinite possibility. Read without deciding. Witness without concluding. Stay in the question of what it means to be the world witnessing itself, without immediately resolving that into actionable steps for living better.
I know that's not what's going to happen. The structure won't allow it. Mrs. Elm has a curriculum to deliver. Every life you sample will become a parable. You'll choose your root life armed with better frameworks. You'll visit Mrs. Elm in the nursing home and play chess and promise to keep choosing kindness. And that might genuinely help you. I'm not here to say it won't. Plenty of people have found real comfort in learning to perceive their lives as enough.
But I want you to know there's another way. A way that lets you remain in mystery without calling it avoidance. A way that understands witness attention where simply being present to life without immediately optimising it, is as valuable in itself.
You don't have to figure out life like a puzzle. You don't have to extract the correct lesson from every experience. You don't have to choose the right perception. You're allowed to just... be there. In Bedford or Svalbard or the Midnight Library itself. Witnessing without converting that witnessing into meaning.
Hugo is going to disappear from your story. Mrs. Elm is going to guide you home. You're going to survive your suicide attempt and reconnect with your brother and go on a date with Ash. The book will end with you choosing life, armed with better perception and renewed appreciation for small kindnesses. But before all that, while you're still standing in the library with infinite books surrounding you—I want you to know that you don't owe anyone a lesson. You don't owe anyone growth. You don't owe anyone the correct interpretation of what this liminal space means.
Sometimes a library is just a library. Sometimes attention is just attention. Sometimes being the world witnessing itself is enough, without needing to know what that's for.
They're going to make contemplative space productive. They're going to turn dwelling into destination. They're going to convert your infinite possibility into a single acceptable outcome. And you're going to let them, because the alternative of staying in uncertainty, remaining in questions, dwelling without destination is terrifying in ways that even suicide isn't.
I understand. Most days I still want to convert things into meaning, to make it productive, to prove my life is for something. But on the days when I can just witness, those are the days when I understand what Thoreau actually meant. It's not what you look at that matters. It's what you see.
The library is giving you infinite lives to witness. What if that's enough? What if you don't have to choose? What if the point isn't to sample experiences until you learn to appreciate your root life, but simply to be present to possibility without needing it to resolve into certainty?
I know this isn't the letter you need. You need Mrs. Elm to tell you that kindness matters and perception is everything and your root life is enough. You need the structure to guide you home. You need the lessons that will help you survive. But I wanted you to know, before you leave the library, that there's someone here who would have let you stay. Who would have sat with you in the infinite stacks without needing to know what it meant. Who would have witnessed alongside you without converting that witnessing into curriculum.
Ann
