Anxious People

by Fredrik Backman

This story is about a lot of things, but mostly about idiots.

Because there’s such an unbelievable amount that we’re all supposed to be able to cope with these days. You’re supposed to have a job, and somewhere to live, and a family, and you’re supposed to pay taxes and have clean underwear and remember the password to your damn Wi-Fi.

(It should be noted that when she died, the bank robber’s mum consisted of so much gin and tonic that they didn’t dare cremate her because of the risk of explosion, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t have good advice to offer.)

that we don’t want our children to pursue their own dreams or walk in our footsteps. We want to walk in their footsteps while they pursue our dreams.

We look around occasionally, at our place of work or at parents’ meetings or out in the street, and realize with horror that everyone else seems to know exactly what they’re doing. We’re the only ones who have to pretend. Everyone else can afford stuff and has a handle on other stuff and enough energy to deal with even more stuff. And everyone else’s children can swim. But we weren’t ready to become adults. Someone should have stopped us.

‘if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans,’ and sometimes that comes down to the same thing. The bank robber was only seven years old the first time this was said, and that may well be a little early to hear something of that nature, because it pretty much means ‘life can go all sorts of different ways, but it will probably go wrong.’

Obviously, it has nothing to do with you. Just as little as a man jumping off a bridge. Because you’re a normal, decent person, so you would never have robbed a bank. There are simply some things that all normal people understand that you must never under any circumstances do. You mustn’t tell lies, you mustn’t steal, you mustn’t kill, and you mustn’t throw stones at birds. We all agree on that. Except maybe swans, because swans can actually be passive-aggressive little bastards. But apart from swans, you mustn’t throw stones at birds. And you mustn’t tell lies. Unless … well, sometimes you have to, of course, like when your children ask: ‘Why does it smell like chocolate in here? ARE YOU EATING CHOCOLATE?’ But you definitely mustn’t steal or kill, we can agree on that.

She isn’t traumatized, she isn’t weighed down by any obvious grief. She’s just sad, all the time.

The whole thing is a complicated, unlikely story. Perhaps that’s because what we think stories are about often isn’t what they’re about at all. This, for instance, might not actually be the story of a bank robbery, or an apartment viewing or a hostage drama. Perhaps it isn’t even a story about idiots. Perhaps this is a story about a bridge.

One of the most human things about anxiety is that we try to cure chaos with chaos. Someone who has got themselves into a catastrophic situation rarely retreats from it, we’re far more inclined to carry on even faster. We’ve created lives where we can watch other people crash into the wall but still hope that somehow we’re going to pass straight through it. The closer we get, the more confidently we believe that some unlikely solution is miraculously going to save us, while everyone watching us is just waiting for the crash.

I heard a man who worked in a casino say that no one gets ruined by losing, they get ruined by trying to win back the money they lost.

The truth. There isn’t any. All we’ve managed to find out about the boundaries of the universe is that it hasn’t got any, and all we know about God is that we don’t know anything.

But when you get home this evening, when this day is over and the night takes us, allow yourself a deep breath. Because we made it through this day as well. There’ll be another one along tomorrow.