The Answer Is No

by Fredrik Backman

Lucas is mildly surprised, okay? Because his pad thai has no peanuts. Lucas is certainly not a dramatic person, but the peanuts really are a quite central ingredient in a pad thai, the rest of the dish is pretty much just a means of transportation for peanuts into Lucas’s mouth. Pad thai without peanuts is like buying a balloon and just getting the air.

“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.”

Green Shirt looks at him as if she is looking at a five-year-old holding a chain saw inside a bouncy castle.

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.

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.