The Deal of a Lifetime

by Fredrik Backman

Maybe all people have that feeling deep down, that your hometown is something you can never really escape, but can never really go home to, either. Because it’s not home anymore. We’re not trying to make peace with it. Not with the streets and bricks of it. Just with the person we were back then. And maybe forgive ourselves for everything we thought we would become and didn’t.

When five-year-old girls die, no one writes about that, there aren’t any memorials in the evening papers, their feet are still too small, they haven’t had time to make anyone care about their footsteps yet.

But the vast majority of successful people don’t become bastards, we were bastards long before. That’s why we’ve been successful.

Every parent will take five minutes in the car outside the house from time to time, just sitting there. Just breathing and gathering the strength to head back inside to all of their responsibilities. The suffocating expectation of being good, coping. Every parent will take ten seconds in the stairwell occasionally, key in hand, not putting it in the lock.

The only thing of value on Earth is time. One second will always be a second, there’s no negotiating with that.”

I bluntly asked you whether you were happy. Because I am who I am. And you replied: “It’s good enough, Dad. Good enough.” Because you knew I hated that phrase. You were always someone who could be happy. You don’t know how much of a blessing that is.

I failed with you. I tried to make you tough. You ended up kind.

Happy people don’t create anything, their world is one without art and music and skyscrapers, without discoveries and innovations. All leaders, all of your heroes, they’ve been obsessed. Happy people don’t get obsessed, they don’t devote their lives to curing illnesses or making planes take off. The happy leave nothing behind. They live for the sake of living, they’re only on earth as consumers. Not me.

Yikes

Your footprints will vanish, you’ll never have existed. You humans always think you’re ready to give your lives, but only until you understand what that really involves. You’re obsessed with your legacy, aren’t you? You can’t bear to die and be forgotten.”

“You’re not scared. You’re just grieving. No one tells you humans that your sorrow feels like fear.”