The Deal of a Lifetime

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

You were always someone who could be happy. You don’t know how much of a blessing that is.

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

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.

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

We said very little, because there was too much I wanted to say. That's always when we fall silent.

It’s bloody awful to admit to yourself that you’re not the kind of person you’ve always thought you were.

If we’re asked, “Are all lives worth the same?” the majority of us will reply with a resounding “Yes!” But only until someone points to a person we love and asks: “What about that life?

I was born here but I’ve never gotten used to it; Helsingborg and I will never find peace. Maybe everyone feels that way about their hometown: the place we’re from never apologizes, never admits that it was wrong about us. It just sits there, at the end of the motorway, whispering: “You might be all rich and powerful now. And maybe you do come home with expensive watches and fancy clothes. But you can’t fool me, because I know who you really are. You’re just a scared little boy.

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.

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.

A second is always a second; that’s the one definitive value we have on earth.

... and I thought about your hands. You've always touched the things you like as though they had a pulse.

You’ll wake up soon. It’s Christmas Eve morning. And I loved you.

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

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

I, who had wanted to live a life high above everyone else, ended up with a son who would rather live deep beneath the surface.

That's what fathers do, they sit in front of their sons and tell their son's stories to a third person rather than letting them speak for themselves.

I abandoned you, but at least I abandoned you at the top of the hierarchy of needs.

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.

No, the majority of people just survive, they think their things have a value but nothing does. Things only have a price, based on expectation, and I do business with that. The only thing of value on Earth is time. One second will always be a second, there’s no negotiating with that.

Maybe everyone feels that way about their hometown: the place we're from never apologizes, never admits that it was wrong about us.

I looked you in the eye and said: “Life isn’t fair.” You bit your lip. Lowered your eyes and replied: “Lucky for you.

Happiness is for children and animals, it doesn’t have any biological function. 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.

For more than half a century they belonged to one another. She detested the same characteristics in him that last day as she had the first time she saw him under that tree, and still adored all the others. “When you looked straight at me when I was seventy I fell just as hard as I did when I was sixteen.” She smiles. His fingertips touch the skin above her collarbone. “You never became ordinary to me, my love. You were electric shocks and fire.” Her teeth tickle his earlobe when she replies: “No one could ask for more.

Everyone is always negotiating, all of the time. You're doing the deal of your life, every day. This was mine.

I’m the kind of person who doesn’t have any equals, I only have people above me that I want something from and people beneath me who I trample on.

But something happened. I walked along the beach out by Råå, the morning after the diagnosis, and I saw two dogs running into the sea, playing in the waves. And I wondered: Have you ever been like that, as happy as they are? Could you be that happy? Would it be worth it?

I sobbed despairingly. “Then why did you take him? Why do you take everyone I love?” She gently placed her hand in my hair. Whispered: “It’s not down to us who goes and who stays. That’s why it’s against the rules for us to hurt.