Page 266 - The Midnight Library

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e Volcano

It is quite a revelation to discover that the place you wanted to escape to is

the exact same place you escaped from. at the prison wasn’t the place, but
the perspective. And the most peculiar discover y Nora made was that, of all
the extremely divergent variations of herself she had experienced, the most
radical sense of change happened within the exact same life. e one she
began and ended with.

is biggest and most profound shi happened not by becoming richer or
more successful or more famous or by being amid the glaciers and polar
bears of Svalbard. It happened by waking up in the exact same bed, in the

same grotty damp apartment with its dilapidated sofa and yucca plant and
tiny potted cacti and bookshelves and untried yoga manuals.
ere was the same electric piano and books. ere was the same sad
absence of a feline and lack of a job. ere was still the same unknowability
about her life ahead.

And yet, ever ything was different.
And it was different because she no longer felt she was there simply to
ser ve the dreams of other people. She no longer felt like she had to find sole

fulfilment as some imaginar y perfect daughter or sister or partner or wife or
mother or employee or anything other than a human being, orbiting her
own purpose, and answerable to herself.
And it was different because she was alive, when she had so nearly been
dead. And because that had been her choice. A choice to live. Because she

had touched the vastness of life and within that vastness she had seen the
possibility not only of what she could do, but also feel. ere were other
scales and other tunes. ere was more to her than a flat line of mild to