I just finished reading Matt Haig’s ‘The Midnight Library’. And without giving away too many spoilers, at the opening of the book we find Nora, the main character, in a life which fills her with suffering, despair and regret. But after a series of experiments living differently, she comes to realise that it is not her life that has caused her suffering but her desire to serve everyone else’s dreams other than her own. After the experiments, she comes to realise she has the freedom to choose.

I vividly remember a New Yorker cartoon that encapsulated this idea beautifully. It was a picture of a person that, at first, looks as if they are stuck in a cage….only after a while, you notice the sides of the cage are wide open.

To paraphrase Matt Haigh, very few of us are in a prison. More often it’s simply our perspective.