The Midnight Library

by Matt Haig

In this life, she clearly had no taste. But since when did taste have anything to do with happiness?

The lonely mind in the busy city yearns for connection because it thinks human-to-human connection is the point of everything. But amid pure nature (or the ‘tonic of wildness’ as Thoreau called it) solitude took on a different character. It became in itself a kind of connection. A connection between herself and the world. And between her and herself.

Maybe even the most seemingly perfectly intense or worthwhile lives ultimately felt the same. Acres of disappointment and monotony and hurts and rivalries but with flashes of wonder and beauty.

And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness.

She didn’t want to die. And she didn’t want to live any other life than the one that was hers.

We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite.