Hector and the Search for Happiness

by Francois Lelord

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  HECTOR IS DISSATISFIED

  HECTOR HAS DOUBTS

  HECTOR MAKES AN IMPORTANT DISCOVERY

  HECTOR GOES TO CHINA

  HECTOR ENJOYS A GOOD DINNER

  HECTOR COMES CLOSE TO HAPPINESS

  HECTOR IS UNHAPPY

  HECTOR COMES CLOSE TO WISDOM

  HECTOR MAKES A DISCOVERY

  HECTOR ISN’T IN LOVE

  HECTOR FEELS SAD

  HECTOR MEETS UP WITH A GOOD FRIEND

  HECTOR DOES A GOOD TURN

  HECTOR TAKES LESSONS IN UNHAPPINESS

  HECTOR LEARNS ANOTHER LESSON

  HECTOR LEARNS WHY CHILDREN SMILE

  HECTOR’S LIFE IS NO LONGER PEACEFUL

  HECTOR CONTEMPLATES HIS OWN DEATH

  HECTOR IS SMART

  HECTOR CELEBRATES

  HECTOR GAINS PERSPECTIVE

  HECTOR DOES A BIT OF HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY

  HECTOR HAS A DREAM

  HECTOR GOES TO THE BEACH AND DOES SOME MATHS

  HECTOR LEARNS ABOUT FAMILY LIFE

  HECTOR LEARNS THAT HE IS NOT TOTALLY STUPID

  HECTOR LEARNS HOW TO MEASURE HAPPINESS

  HECTOR DOESN’T GO TO MARS

  HECTOR WITNESSES AN EXPERIMENT

  HECTOR RETRACES HIS STEPS

  HECTOR INVENTS THE GAME OF THE FIVE FAMILIES

  HECTOR’S JOURNEY IS A GREAT SUCCESS

  Acknowledgements

  Teaser chapter

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  HECTOR AND THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS

  François Lelord has had a successful career as a psychiatrist in France, where he was born, and in the United States, where he did his postdoc (UCLA). He is the co-author of a number of bestselling self-help books and has consulted for companies interested in reducing stress for their employees. He was on a trip to Hong Kong, questioning his personal and professional life, when the Hector character popped into his mind, and he wrote Hector and the Search for Happiness not quite knowing what kind of book he was writing. The huge success of Hector, first in France, then in Germany and other countries, led him to spend more time writing and traveling, and at the height of the SARS epidemic he found himself in Vietnam, where he practiced psychiatry for a French NGO whose profits go toward heart surgery for poor Vietnamese children. While in Vietnam he also met his future wife, Phuong; today they live in Thailand.

  François Lelord has written three subsequent books about Hector’s journeys: Hector and the Secrets of Love, Hector and the Passage of Time, and Hector and the Wonders of Friendship. Turn to the back of this book for the opening chapters of Hector and the Secrets of Love.

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

  Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland

  (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell,

  Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre,

  Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632,

  New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,

  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in France as Le Voyage d’Hector ou la recherché du bonheur by Odile Jacob

  First published in Great Britain by Gallic Books 2010

  Published in Penguin Books (USA) 2010

  Copyright © Éditions Odile Jacob, 2002

  English translation by Lorenza Garcia copyright © Gallic Books, 2010

  All rights reserved

  eISBN : 978-1-101-45898-3

  CIP data available

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  HECTOR IS DISSATISFIED

  ONCE upon a time there was a young psychiatrist called Hector who was not very satisfied with himself.

  Hector was not very satisfied with himself, even though he looked just like a real psychiatrist: he wore little round glasses that made him look intellectual; he knew how to listen to people sympathetically, saying ‘mmm’; he even had a little moustache, which he twirled when he was thinking very hard.

  His consulting room also looked just like a real psychiatrist’s. There was an old couch (a present from his mother when he moved in), copies of Egyptian and Hindu statuettes, and a large bookcase full of complicated books, some of them so complicated he had not even read them.

  Many people wanted to make an appointment with Hector, not just because he looked like a real psychiatrist, but because he had a gift that all good doctors have and that you can’t simply learn at college: he really was interested in people.

  The first time people go to a psychiatrist, they’re often a bit embarrassed. They worry the psychiatrist will think they’re mad even though they know he’s used to it. Or else they worry that he won’t think their case is serious enough and will tell them to take their troubles elsewhere. But since they’ve made the appointment and kept it, they decide to recount their odd little quirks, the strange thoughts they haven’t told anyone about before but that make them unhappy, the great fears or deep sorrows that prevent them from living life to the full. They also worry that they won’t express themselves properly and that they will be boring. And it must be said that sometimes psychiatrists do look bored, or tired. If you weren’t used to it you might wonder if they really were listening to you.

  But with Hector it was almost never like that. He looked at people as they told their story, he nodded in encouragement, made his little ‘mmm-hmm’ noises, twirled his moustache and sometimes he’d even say, ‘Wait, explain that again. I didn’t quite understand.’ Except on days when he was very tired, people really felt that Hector was listening to what they had to say and finding it interesting.

  So people came back to see him, they made lots of appointments, gave his name to their friends, and mentioned him to their doctors, who sent other patients to him. And soon Hector spent long days listening to people and had a lot of tax to pay, even though he didn’t charge much for a consultation. (His mother was always telling him he should charge more, but he didn’t feel he should.)

  He charged less for his consultations, for example, than Madame Irina, who was quite a well-known psychic. She would say to him, ‘Doctor, you should put up your fees.’

  ‘So I’ve been told,’ Hector would reply.

  ‘I’m saying it for your own good, Doctor, I can see what’s best for you.’

  ‘I’m sure you can. And how are you seeing these days?’

  It should be explained that Madame Irina had come to consult Hector because she could no longer see into the future. Her heart had been broken when a man had left her, and ever since then she couldn’t see pro
perly any more. As she was clever, she was able to find interesting things to tell her clients. But as she was not completely dishonest either, it troubled her not being able to see as before. And so Hector had given her pills for people who feel very sad, and gradually she was regaining her ability to see.

  Hector didn’t know what to make of it.

  He wasn’t just successful because he knew how to listen to people. He also knew all the tricks of his trade.

  First of all, he knew how to answer a question with another question. For example, when people asked him, ‘Do you think I’m going to get better, Doctor?’ he would reply: ‘What does “getting better” mean to you?’ In this way Hector helped people to think about their own case and find their own ways of getting better.

  He also knew all about medication. In psychiatry that’s quite simple since there are only four main types of medication that can be prescribed: pills to take when you’re sad - antidepressants; pills to take when you’re scared - tranquillisers; pills to take when you have very strange thoughts and hear voices - anti-psychotics; and then pills to avoid highs that are too high or lows that are too low - mood stabilisers. Actually, it’s a bit more complicated than that because for each type of medication there are at least ten different brands of pill, all with funny-sounding names that have been made up specially, and the psychiatrist’s job is to find the most suitable one for his patient. Pills are a bit like sweets: not everybody likes the same ones.

  And when medication wasn’t enough, or when people had no need for it, Hector had another way of helping them: psychotherapy. A complicated name for simply helping people by listening and talking to them. Not just talking to them any old how, but following a special method. As with pills, there are different types of psychotherapy, some of them invented by people who have been dead a long time. Hector had learnt a method of psychotherapy invented by people who were still alive, if rather old. According to this method, the psychiatrist talked to the patients as well as listening to them and this went down well, especially with those who had encountered psychiatrists who barely spoke to them, which they simply couldn’t get used to.

  In Madame Irina’s case, Hector hadn’t used much psychotherapy because whenever he was about to ask her a question she would say, ‘I know what you’re going to ask me, Doctor.’

  The worst of it was that she was often (but not always) right.

  And so, using the tricks of his trade - medication, psychotherapy and his gift of being genuinely interested in people - Hector was quite a good psychiatrist. That’s to say, he was as successful as any good doctor, a cardiologist for example. He managed to cure some of his patients completely. Others he kept in good health provided they took their medication every day and came to talk to him from time to time. And finally there were some patients whom he merely managed to help live with their condition by making it as bearable as possible.

  And yet Hector felt dissatisfied.

  He felt dissatisfied because he could see perfectly well that he couldn’t make people happy.

  HECTOR HAS DOUBTS

  HECTOR’S practice was in a city full of wide avenues lined with attractive old buildings. This city differed from most of the world’s big cities: the inhabitants had plenty to eat; if they were ill they could receive free medical treatment; children went to school, and most people had a job. They could also go to lots of different showings at the cinema that weren’t too expensive; there were museums, swimming pools and even special places to ride bicycles without being run over. People could also watch lots of different TV channels, read all sorts of newspapers, and journalists were free to write almost whatever they wanted. People had plenty of time off, even though this could be a problem for those who didn’t have enough money to go away on holiday.

  Because, although everything worked better than in most of the world’s big cities, there were still some people who had only just enough money to live on, and some children who couldn’t stand school and behaved very badly, or didn’t even have parents to look after them any more. There were also grown-ups who were out of work and who were so unhappy that they tried to make themselves feel better by drinking anything and everything or by taking very bad pills. But those people didn’t live in the type of neighbourhood where Hector worked. Hector knew they existed because he had treated a lot of them when he worked at the hospital. And since then, he’d continued going to the hospital every Wednesday instead of going to his practice. And that’s where he saw people like Roger, for example, whom he asked, ‘Have you been taking your medication, Roger?’

  ‘Yes, yes, the Lord is my shepherd, He leadeth me.’

  ‘I’m sure he does, but have you been taking your medication?’

  ‘Yes, yes, the Lord is my shepherd, He leadeth me.’

  You see, Roger believed that the Good Lord talked to him constantly, what they call hearing voices, and he would reply out loud. What’s wrong with that? you may ask. The problem was that when Roger didn’t take his medication, he would talk to himself in the street - sometimes in a very loud voice if he’d had a drink - and unkind people would laugh at him. As he was quite a big fellow this occasionally ended in trouble, and Roger would find himself back in the psychiatric hospital for a long time.

  Roger had a lot of other problems: he’d never had a mother and father to look after him, he hadn’t done well at school, and since he’d begun talking to the Good Lord nobody wanted to employ him. And so Hector, together with a lady from social services, had filled in loads of forms so that Roger could stay in his tiny studio flat in a neighbourhood you wouldn’t necessarily have wanted to live in.

  At Hector’s practice it was very different from the hospital: the people who came to see him there had done quite well at school, had been brought up by a mother and a father, and had a job. Or if they lost their job they quite easily found another. They generally dressed nicely and knew how to tell their story without making grammatical errors and the women were often quite pretty (which was sometimes a problem for Hector).

  Some of them had real disorders or had suffered real misfortune, and in this case Hector generally succeeded in treating them using psychotherapy and medication. But a lot of them had no real disorders - or at least none that Hector had learnt to treat when he was a student - and hadn’t suffered any real misfortune either - like having unkind parents or losing somebody really close to them. And yet, these people weren’t happy.

  Take Adeline, for example, quite an attractive young woman whom Hector saw quite often.

  ‘How are you?’ Hector would ask.

  ‘Are you hoping that one day I’ll say: “Very well”?’

  ‘Why do you think I’d hope that?’

  ‘You must be getting rather fed up with my problems.’

  She wasn’t far wrong, even though Hector was actually quite fond of Adeline. She was successful in her work which was to sell things - that’s to say, she knew how to sell things for a lot more than they were worth, and consequently her bosses were delighted and often gave her large bonuses.

  And yet she never stopped complaining, especially about men. As she was really rather charming, she always had a man in her life, but it never worked out: either they were nice but she didn’t find them very exciting; or they were exciting but she didn’t find them particularly nice, or they were neither nice nor exciting and she wondered why she was with them at all. She had found a way of making the exciting men nicer and that was by leaving them. But then, of course, they weren’t exciting any more either. In addition, all these men were successful, because if a man wasn’t successful he didn’t stand a chance with Adeline.

  Just by asking Adeline questions, Hector tried to make her understand that the height of happiness did not necessarily come from having the most excitement with a very successful man who is also very nice (especially as you can imagine how easy it is to find a very successful man who is also very nice!) But it was difficult, Adeline had very high standards.

  Hector had qui
te a few patients like Adeline.

  He also saw men who thought like Adeline: they wanted the most exciting woman who was also successful and nice. And at work it was the same: they wanted a very important job, but one that would allow them the freedom to ‘fulfil themselves’ — as some of them put it. Even when they were successful in their jobs they still wondered whether they wouldn’t have been much happier doing something else.

  Basically, all of these well-dressed people said that they didn’t like their lives, they questioned their choice of profession, they wondered whether they were married or nearly married to the right person, they had the impression that they were missing out on something important in life, that time was passing and they couldn’t be everything that they wanted to be.

  They weren’t happy, and it was no joke because some of them had thoughts of suicide, and Hector had to pay special attention to them.

  He began wondering whether he didn’t attract that particular type of person. Perhaps there was something about his way of talking which they especially liked? Or about the way he twirled his moustache as he looked at them, or even about his Hindu statuettes? Which was why they passed on his address, and more and more of them turned up at his practice. He casually asked his more experienced colleagues if they only treated people with real disorders. Hector’s colleagues looked at him as if he’d asked rather a silly question. Of course they didn’t only treat people with real disorders! They also saw a lot of people who were dissatisfied with their lives and who felt unhappy. And from what they told him, Hector understood that they didn’t have much more success than him.

  What was even stranger was that in those neighbourhoods where most people were much more fortunate than people living elsewhere, there were more psychiatrists than in all the other neighbourhoods put together, and every month new ones arrived! In fact, if you looked at a world map of psychiatrists (they’re very hard to find so don’t even try), you’d see that in countries like the one where Hector lived, there were far more psychiatrists than in the rest of the world, where there were nevertheless far more people.