BookMarks #133: The Answer Is No

Title: The Answer Is No

Author: Fredrick Backman

Genre: Fiction, Short

Published: 2024

BookMarks

"The Answer Is No", is a short book, originally published in Swedish. It is the story of Lucas, a loner living in an apartment, whose quiet and happy life is suddenly disrupted by events nearby.

The entire first chapter comprises of “It’s a frying pan that ruins Lucas’s life. We’ll get to that.” And this is when you realize what a hilarious roller-coaster ride this story is going to be. And yet it provides some great gems with quite deep meaning as we go along. Such as

• People aren’t supposed to be happy, they’re only supposed to want to be happy.
• All he did was to remove the one thing that makes almost all people unhappy: other people.
• Being smart is the worst thing one can be in modern society. All it ever means is more work.
• A funny thing about rule-loving people is that to them it seems more important to impose punishment than it is to actually solve problems, and a funny thing about rule-breaking people is that they seem to find breaking rules a lot easier to do if someone else has broken them first.
• “Responsibility” and “Commitment” are actually two of the easiest ways of ruining any perfectly good day.
• With the defeated manner of a sausage that dressed itself up as a carrot to avoid being eaten by a bear, only to be found by a rabbit.
• The truth about problems is that the problem itself is never actually the problem. It’s always the people involved who are the problem.
• 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.
• 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
• Don’t look on the internet for someone who is exactly like you. Look for someone who isn’t.
• If you ask people what they think, they start thinking, and that’s how wars start.
• One day you’re a happy, whole person, and the next day you’re forced into the most horrible thing on earth: making decisions.

That’s quite a lot of deep insights into that basic human quest – the pursuit of happiness.

Previously on BookMarks: The Past As Present