The Answer Is No

by Fredrik Backman

Lucas is happy. This is a very provoking thing to the world. Because people aren’t supposed to be happy, they’re only supposed to want to be happy, because how otherwise are you supposed to be able to sell things to them? More than anything people are supposed to pretend to be happy on the internet so that other people are reminded of how unhappy they themselves are by comparison. Humanity has a system. But Lucas? He’s just happy. It wasn’t even particularly difficult. All he did was to remove the one thing that makes almost all people unhappy: other people.

Not once tonight will Lucas have to pause a movie to explain that he’s seen precisely as much of this movie and has the exact same amount of information as the person who just asked: “Who’s that guy?”

The number of times Lucas will have to tell someone “Yes, I understand that it might have felt like I sounded annoyed, but I’m really not” today is zero.

He works well in groups as long as it’s groups of fewer than two people.

but being someone’s neighbor can be utterly challenging, as they might in a worst-case scenario want to talk to you. Therefore, to avoid your neighbors, you have to make yourself uninteresting, but not too uninteresting, because that makes you interesting. You have to position yourself somewhere right between “What a great guy!” and “He seems . . . weird.” That’s your sweet spot, because everyone wants a neighbor who minds his own business, but if you mind your own business too much the neighbors may be reminded that this is exactly what everyone always says about serial killers: “Him? I remember him as a bit of a loner. Kept to himself.”

Because one day Lucas’s doorbell rings, and nothing good ever starts that way.

Being smart is the worst thing one can be in modern society. All it ever means is more work.

Because Lucas is making the mistake of thinking that the board wants to solve the problem. But people actually almost never want to do that.

By coincidence, those people who complain the second most seem to be the ones who’ve just recently bought new frying pans. But, of course, the people who complain the most are people who don’t even live in the area, but would still love to guess what kind of people are throwing away frying pans, which somehow always seem to be people who don’t look like the people who are doing the guessing.

the truth about problems is that the problem itself is never actually the problem. It’s always the people involved who are the problem.

“I’m . . . no expert. But I think most people who want to be happy try to add things to their lives. But really what maybe they should be doing is taking something away.”

He has found that the easiest way to be happy is to think about time in about eight-hour increments, and to always have something to look forward to at the end of those hours:

I think that children should be teenagers first, and become small afterwards, because it’s unbearable for parents to get used to the fact that they don’t jump anymore.”

Then they stand in silence, the three people, a breath away but with whole lives between them.

A gentle breeze comes through the city. It sweeps over the pile and rattles through all the junk that people have left there. But once it wasn’t junk, Lucas thinks, once it was all things. Once someone bought that frying pan or that ice skate, thinking: Maybe this is what will make me happy? For a short moment, Lucas thinks that this strange feeling he is experiencing is a fever. Maybe he’s coming down with a cold? But then he realizes it’s something much, much worse. It’s empathy.

I, the angel, ask you to choose one thing each from the pile. For what is now everyone’s trash was once someone’s possession. Carry this thing with you through life as a reminder of the pile within yourselves. Do not collect junk in your hearts. You can make yourself happy if you don’t let others make you unhappy.

Don’t look on the internet for someone who is exactly like you. Look for someone who isn’t. Love is not to never fight. Love is always making up.

Lucas is happy. It’s not as hard as one might think to become, the hard part is just to keep being it. It’s hard because it’s so easy to get in your head that if you are to be happy, you have to be happy exactly all of the time. And who in the world has the energy for that? Happiness can be exhausting. Honestly, it’s most often enough to just not be the opposite.

So, Lucas isn’t unhappy. That’s the secret.

One day you’re a happy, whole person, and the next day you’re forced into the most horrible thing on earth: making decisions.

Because the doctors and nurses understand very well that all the modern pills and treatments are surely great, but sometimes what people really need most of all is a prescription for a break.