Page 109 - The Midnight Library

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She hadn’t meant it to be funny but the whole room laughed at this. ere

had clearly been no need to introduce herself.
‘Life is strange,’ she said. ‘How we live it all at once. In a straight line. But
really that’s not the whole picture. Because life isn’t simply made of the
things we do, but the things we don’t do too. And ever y moment of our life

is a . . . kind of turning.’
Still nothing.
‘ ink about it. ink about how we start off . . . as this set thing. Like the
seed of a tree planted in the ground. And then we . . . we grow . . . we grow

. . . and at first we are a trunk . . .’
Absolutely nothing.
‘But then the tree – the tree that is our life – develops branches. And think
of all those branches, departing from the trunk at different heights. And

think of all those branches, branching off again, heading in oen opposing
directions. ink of those branches becoming other branches, and those
becoming twigs. And think of the end of each of those twigs, all in different
places, having started from the same one. A life is like that, but on a bigger

scale. New branches are formed ever y second of ever y day. And from our
perspective – from ever yone’s perspective – it feels like a . . . like a
continuum. Each twig has travelled only one journey. But there are still
other twigs. And there are also other todays. Other lives that would have

been different if you’d taken different directions earlier in your life. is is a
tree of life. Lots of religions and mythologies have talked about the tree of
life. It’s there in Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity. Lots of philosophers
and writers have talked about tree met aphors too. For Sylvia Plath, existence

was a fig tree and each possible life she could live – the happily-married one,
the successful-poet one – was this sweet juicy fig, but she couldn’t get to
taste the sweet juicy figs and so they just rotted right in front of her. It can
drive you insane, thinking of all the other lives we don’t live.

‘For instance, in most of my lives I am not standing at this podium talking
to you about success . . . In most lives I am not an Olympic gold medallist.’
She remembered something Mrs Elm had told her in the Midnight Librar y.
‘You see, doing one thing differently is ver y oen the same as doing

ever ything differently. Actions can’t be reversed within a lifet ime, however
much we tr y . . .’
People were listening now. ey clearly needed a Mrs Elm in their lives.