Anxious People

by Fredrik Backman

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

So it needs saying from the outset that it’s always very easy to declare that other people are idiots, but only if you forget how idiotically difficult being human is.

Our hearts are bars of soap that we keep losing hold of;

We don’t have a plan, we just do our best to get through the day, because there’ll be another one coming along tomorrow.

One single really bad idea. That’s all it takes.

Not one of those big-city thirty-nine-year-olds who deal with their midlife crisis by buying ridiculously expensive cycling shorts and swimming caps because they have a black hole in their soul that devours Instagram pictures, more the sort of thirty-nine-year-old whose daily consumption of cheese and carbohydrates was more likely to be classified medically as a cry for help rather than a diet.

At the end of your career you’re trying to find a point to it all, and at the start of it you’re looking for a purpose.