The Answer Is No

by Fredrik Backman

For everything else: No. Just no. Because happiness for Lucas is very easy, it’s everything he already has minus humans.

He has never once asked anyone “What would you like to eat tonight?” and gotten the answer “I can eat anything!” which just happen to be words that never ever in the history of humankind have been uttered by someone who will actually eat any of the FIFTEEN things then suggested to them.

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?”

And of course, dear reader, you might now blurt out: But what about love then, Lucas? Falling head over heels? That feeling that before love your world was black and white, but this person is all of your color? To that Lucas would answer, if he absolutely had to, which thank goodness he doesn’t: How well has all this worked out for you, dear reader, so far? Instead of falling in love, have you tried to not do that? It really saves a lot of time.

Because Lucas’s research into human relationships on TV has led him to conclude that love is between two people: One just wants to sit down, and the other one gets stressed out by that.

One person is looking for a chair and the other one is looking for a project....

By observing these married couples through his window on Sundays, Lucas has noticed that they often consist of a monkey and a bird, and they have decided to go for a nice stroll together. But the monkey can’t fly, so the bird has to walk. And after a while the monkey gets very annoyed with the bird, because the bird walks so very slowly. So then the bird suggests that maybe it can fly above the monkey instead? And...

So love is surely great, dear reader. But have you ever tried not having to share a pint of ice cream? Or being able to buy any furniture you want without having to instruct an ogre from a swamp how to sit on it without making weird creases in the fabric? Have you ...

Above all, have you tried being really content with your life and not immediately thinking: Wow, now everything is really perfect, maybe we should have a baby? Because do you know what children are? Another human being. You know that feeling you get when someone’s listening to really crappy music, and you put on a pair of headphones, and all that crappy stuff just vanishes? Imag...

“No, no, not really. I was only unconscious a little while. But when I woke up in the hospital, the doctor and the nurses had . . . well, met my family. And apparently my daughter had asked if the doctor knew where her backpack was before she even asked how I was doing. And my son had been rather impatient asking when I was coming home, because he had no clean underwear, because my husband doesn’t know how to work the washing machine. Or the dishwasher. Or the vacuum cleaner, even though that was my husband’s Christmas gift to me . .

“You know, I’ve seen a lot of Facebook groups. One is called We Who Are Ninjas. Get it? That’s how badly people want to be something, anything at all, that not even ninjas want to live in secret now. The lunatics are just trying to find a little thing to give their lives meaning, Lucas. Just like the rest of us. They’re just trying to be happy.”

Down on the street the protesters are shouting at each other, and at Lucas, but most of all they’re probably shouting just to shout. Just to be heard. Lucas stands quietly for a very, very long time, thinking about how awful it must feel: to be a person who so desperately wants something to happen. Lucas never wants anything to go on at all.

“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.”

“People who have cats live longer. There’s research. I think maybe it’s because you don’t want to live as long after it dies. My cat was very old, at the end he was almost blind, I used to wake up at night because he’d accidentally knock things over on the floor. I miss that all the time now. It’s hard to get used to a silent apartment.”

Lucas doesn’t really know how to respond to that. He doesn’t think much about death. Not much about life either. 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: pad thai, video games, wine. Small, great things. But then again, Lucas has never loved a cat, so what does he really know about life?

“You know, I tried the pad thai with peanuts, as you suggested. I always thought I didn’t like peanuts, just because my husband and our kids don’t like peanuts, but now I’m actually starting to think that maybe I’ve just forgotten what I actually like and don’t like for myself.”

“You don’t need that much appreciation as a mother. Just a little bit. You don’t need that much validation. Just . . . a little. It’s so silly, but I miss another thing, too, from when the kids were very young. They used to come running and jump into my arms when I came home. Jump into my arms. Have you ever experienced that?”

“Well, we’ve had an evaluation meeting and decided that maybe we should have let you go down and pick up that very first frying pan. The way you suggested. Then it might not have become a pile. Admittedly, we would then never have found the guilty frying pan thrower-outer, but now it seems we haven’t done that anyway, and now there are so many guilty thrower-outers that we don’t even know who’s the guiltiest anymore: whoever started the pile, or everyone else who left junk on the pile afterwards.”

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.

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.