Hector and the Search for Happiness

by Francois Lelord

  Ying Li Ying Li YING LI Hector Ying Li Hector YING LI Hector Ying Li Clara.

  Lesson no. 6: Happiness is a long walk in beautiful, unfamiliar mountains.

  Lesson no. 7: It’s a mistake to think that happiness is the goal.

  Lesson no. 8: Happiness is being with the people you love.

  Lesson no. 8b: Unhappiness is being separated from the people you love.

  Lesson no. 9: Happiness is knowing your family lacks for nothing.

  Lesson no. 10: Happiness is doing a job you love.

  Lesson no. 11: Happiness is having a home and a garden of your own.

  Lesson no. 12: It’s harder to be happy in a country run by bad people.

  Lesson no. 13: Happiness is feeling useful to others.

  Lesson no. 14: Happiness is to be loved for exactly who you are.

  Observation: People are kinder to a child who smiles (very important).

  The boss read through to the end then he looked at Hector and said, ‘All right, let him go.’

  HECTOR CELEBRATES

  HECTOR was on yet another plane, and you’ll never guess what, he was sitting in the most expensive part of the plane, the part with seats that stretch right out and a private TV screen and air hostesses who smile and bring you lots of champagne.

  This time he’d paid for it himself, even though he couldn’t really afford it. He knew that when he got back he’d have lots of calls from the lady who looked after his bank account, but he’d decided that he was going to do whatever he liked for a while, because he’d realised that life could end very suddenly. (Of course he’d known this for a long time, but, as we keep telling you, knowing and feeling are not the same things.)

  Since his spell in the storeroom that smelt of dead rat, Hector felt that life was wonderful.

  He knew that this feeling wouldn’t last, because he’d treated people who’d had near-death experiences — during the war, for example, in the camps where almost everybody had died, and even a man whose boat had sunk and who’d spent a long time in the water waiting to be rescued.

  These people had told him that, just after being saved, they too had felt life was wonderful. But they had soon become caught up in life’s everyday problems, big or small (not counting the people who’d been haunted for years by terrible memories). And now these people who had been close to death fretted over their tax returns or because the neighbours had the TV on too loud, just like everybody else.

  And so Hector wanted to make the most of this feeling while it lasted.

  The night he’d nearly died, everybody had fêted him when he got back to Marie-Louise’s house, everybody was laughing and crying at the same time, and Jean-Michel and Marcel were there.

  Marie-Louise’s family hadn’t called the police because they had expected that the criminals would demand a ransom for Hector’s release. Calling the police might have complicated matters, and anyway, some of the policemen might have wanted some of the ransom money, because in this country they weren’t very well paid. As the criminals had let Hector come back with the car (just so as not to upset Eduardo in case he heard about it), there hadn’t even been a theft. It was as though the whole thing had never happened, and there was no need to tell the police or the army of men in shorts or anybody else.

  A big party started up in the middle of the night.

  Even so, Hector went to see the chauffeur and the bodyguard, who were waiting shamefaced in the kitchen, because Marie-Louise and Nestor had given them a severe ticking off. They tried to explain that none of it was their fault, the criminals had driven off so fast (and no doubt they had been so scared) that they hadn’t had time to tell them that Hector was still in the car. Hector told them not to worry about it, and that he’d tell Marie-Louise and Nestor not to tick them off again.

  Hector was so happy to feel alive that he wanted everybody to be happy. And that was good, because they were.

  It was very late, but nobody felt like going to bed, and even people in the neighbouring houses had woken up and come to the party. There was music and everyone danced — everybody danced very, very well, even the older men and women who were the same age as Hector’s parents. Even Hector, who didn’t know how to dance very well, danced. But when you’re very happy you don’t mind about feeling clumsy, and when you’re the hero of the evening your dance partners forgive you, especially Marie-Louise’s pretty cousin with whom he didn’t dance too badly and who continued to smile at him like she had earlier, during dinner. And there was also a lot to drink, all kinds of rum cocktails and some of that excellent beer — the same one that was in the crate Hector had sat on in the storeroom as he waited to die.

  But Hector was no longer thinking about death, especially not when Marie-Louise’s cousin took him upstairs. They went into a bedroom that couldn’t have been used for some time. There was some old furniture and some family photos from the time when things weren’t so bad in that country, and Hector had the impression of going into his grandparents’ bedroom when he was a little boy. But the impression didn’t last long because the cousin led him over to the bed (or did Hector lead her? It’s difficult to know) and they did the things people do when they’re in love, with the music drifting up through the floorboards.

  Afterwards, Hector felt a little tired, but Marie-Louise’s cousin didn’t at all, and they went back down to join the people who were still dancing. Hector felt a bit embarrassed, but very quickly he realised that either people hadn’t noticed or they thought it was very good that he’d gone upstairs with Marie-Louise’s cousin.

  Later on, he came upon Nestor, who was opening a beer, and Nestor winked at him. As the music was blaring, he drew near and spoke rather loudly into Hector’s ear.

  ‘So, how is your investigation into happiness going?’

  ‘Not bad, not bad,’ Hector replied, rather awkwardly.

  Nestor laughed, and spoke into Hector’s ear again.

  ‘Here, there are plenty of reasons to be unhappy, even for people like us who are relatively fortunate. So when there’s an occasion to be happy we want to make the most of it! We don’t care about the next day, we never know what it might bring!’

  Just then, the pretty cousin, who’d begun to dance with Jean-Michel (because although Jean-Michel wasn’t really interested in girls, he’d always danced like a god), gave Hector a big smile and that Hector understood very well, even better than Nestor’s explanations.

  In the plane, Hector took out his little notebook again.

  Lesson no. 15: Happiness comes when you feel truly alive.

  This wasn’t bad, but it didn’t explain it very well. He chewed his pencil and then wrote:Lesson no. 16: Happiness is knowing how to celebrate.

  He remembered Édouard, who was fond of celebrating — like on that first evening in China. And there’s no point in telling you what Hector thought about next, because even if you’re not a psychiatrist you’ve no doubt guessed.

  HECTOR GAINS PERSPECTIVE

  HECTOR continued to drink the champagne brought to him by the nice air hostesses, and he felt very content. But this didn’t stop him from thinking about happiness, because he was serious about his investigation.

  Firstly, why did drinking champagne (or very good beer, or the excellent wines Édouard liked) make almost everybody happy? All over the world, people drank these grown-up drinks in order to celebrate, and it always worked, it always made people happier and everybody felt jolly at the same time.

  Unfortunately, some people when they drank too much did very stupid things, like driving very badly and causing accidents, picking fights, and doing what people in love do, but with anybody and everybody so they caught nasty diseases. Other people drank so often that it no longer had much effect on them. And so they never stopped drinking and became more and more ill. (Édouard, over there in China, was perhaps not far from that slippery slope.)

  That made Hector think: if drinking made people happier and at the same time affected their brain (you only need to hea
r somebody speaking who has drunk too much), that meant there was an area of the brain that made you happy and that became more active when you drank. Hector felt pleased, this would be a good question to ask the professor of Happiness Studies.

  And what about the pills the pharmaceutical companies made? For the time being, they were only able to lift people’s mood to where it had been before they started feeling very sad or very scared. But what if one day a pharmaceutical company invented a pill that made you happier than you’d ever been before? Would he want to prescribe it to his patients? He wasn’t sure.

  He took out his little notebook and wrote:Question: Is happiness simply a chemical reaction in the brain?

  To reward himself for having thought hard, Hector gestured to the air hostess, who came over, smiling, to fill his glass. He thought she was very pretty, but he knew that this might also be the effect of the champagne, and anyway life was complicated enough already with Clara, Ying Li and Marie-Louise’s cousin, who had told him that she occasionally went on holiday to his country.

  He wondered why he wasn’t as in love with her as he was with Ying Li, but if you’ve been concentrating you’ll already have guessed: Hector had only shared enjoyment with Marie-Louise’s cousin (we won’t say her name in case you bump into her in Hector’s city). With Ying Li he’d shared everything, enjoyment and sorrow. With Clara, too, of course, but for some time now they’d shared too much frustration, boredom and fatigue.

  He would have liked to discuss all this with somebody, but there was nobody next to him because he was in a part of the plane that was so expensive it was almost empty. Even if there had been somebody, he would have had to lean over a long way because the armrests were so wide. This was interesting because it meant that for rich people happiness was being able to feel on their own, at any rate when they were on a plane.

  Whereas for poor people, like the women on their oilcloths, happiness was being surrounded by their friends. But it’s true that you never know on a plane whether the person next to you will be a friend, so it’s best to take precautions.

  Just then, an air hostess came up from the lower deck where the seats were less expensive, and went to talk to her fellow air hostesses. They looked quite worried. Hector wondered whether it was because there was a problem with the plane, and he got ready to think about death again, though much more comfortably here than in the storeroom.

  One of the hostesses came over and asked if there was a doctor among the passengers. Hector felt uncomfortable: as a psychiatrist you are a real doctor, but because of listening to people’s problems all the time, you often get out of the habit of treating ordinary illnesses. Also, he wondered whether the air hostess was asking for a doctor because there was a lady on the plane having a baby. He’d always been nervous about this when travelling by train or plane. When he was a student, he’d never gone into the wards where women had babies. Of course he’d studied the subject, but only very briefly the night before the exam, and he’d forgotten most of it, and in any case studying and reality are not the same things. And so he felt rather uncomfortable, but even so he signalled to the air hostess and he told her that he was a real doctor.

  The air hostess was very glad, because she’d looked in the other sections of the plane and there were no doctors, or at any rate nobody who wanted to say that they were. (Hector understood why later, as will you.)

  And so, Hector left his little paradise and followed the air hostess down into economy class. Everybody in the rows of seats looked up at him as he went by because they’d understood that he was a doctor, and this worried him slightly; what would he do if they all took it into their heads to demand a consultation?

  The air hostess took him over to a lady who didn’t look very well.

  Hector began speaking to her, but it was difficult because she had a very bad headache, and she didn’t speak Hector’s language. When she spoke in English, she had an accent which Hector and the air hostess found quite difficult to understand.

  Her face was slightly swollen, like people who drink too much, but she didn’t look as if she’d been drinking. Finally, she took a piece of paper out of her bag and handed it to Hector. It was a medical report: this was much easier to understand for a doctor. Six months ago, the lady had had an operation inside her head because a small piece of her brain had begun to grow in a way it shouldn’t, and this bad growth had been removed. Then Hector noticed that her hair wasn’t her own, it was a wig. Since hair grows back in six months, Hector understood that the lady had been given medication that had made her face swell up and her hair fall out, and that the growth must have been very bad indeed. The lady studied him while he was reading the report of the surgery, as if she were trying to tell from his face what he made of it all. But Hector had been trained to have a reassuring look at all times and he said to her, ‘Don’t worry. I’m just going to ask you some questions.’

  And he spoke to her like a doctor, in order to find out how long she’d had the headache, and whether it was a throbbing pain like a heart beat, or more like toothache, and which part of her head hurt most. He examined her eyes with a small torch the air hostess lent him. He asked the lady to squeeze his hands in hers, and other things you learn in order to become a doctor. And the lady seemed less anxious than when he’d arrived.

  Asking those questions and doing those tests had taken Hector’s mind off the thought that this lady might die, but once he’d finished he was forced to think about it again.

  Just then, the air hostess handed him the lady’s passport, and he saw in the photograph, which was less than a year old, a beautiful young woman who had the same eyes as the woman now looking at him, and he understood that the illness had also stolen her beauty.

  He remembered lesson no. 14: Happiness is to be loved for exactly who you are.

  And so he smiled at her, because men’s smiles must be something she greatly missed.

  HECTOR DOES A BIT OF HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY

  HER name was Djamila, which happens to mean beautiful, and she came from an equally beautiful country, where people a little older than Hector would have gone on holiday when they were young, because you could smoke weed in the midst of magnificent mountains. The girls would have brought back beautiful fabrics, which they turned into dresses and curtains. (It was a time when dresses and curtains looked very similar.)

  Since then, that country had always been at war, at first because it had been invaded by a large neighbouring country that had wanted to create a heaven on earth, except that the inhabitants of the beautiful country didn’t agree with their version of heaven. So the inhabitants had fought for years against the soldiers from the large neighbouring country and the war had become like a festering sore that made the big country very sick. After that, things went from bad to worse for everybody, countless mothers had shed countless tears, the big country had grown as weak as a small country, and Djamila’s country had gone on being at war because some people there also wanted to create heaven on earth. (Be very wary of people who declare that they’re going to create heaven on earth, they almost invariably create hell.) The beautiful country had grown poorer than when Hector was a child. It was getting better now; a large army made up of people from countries all over the world had gone to sort things out (but they didn’t wear shorts because it was too cold) and people had renewed hope.

  Except Djamila, who can’t have had much hope, and who was trying to find reasons to have some by studying Hector’s face as he read her medical report written by another doctor, a medical report that, as you’ve guessed, wasn’t very hopeful.

  Hector told her that he would look after her until the end of the flight.

  He put on his doctorly air and told the air hostess that Djamila needed to be able to stretch out, that it would relieve her headache, and that they must take her to the seat next to his so that he could keep an eye on her. The air hostess called over a very kind steward. The three of them helped Djamila to get up and walk to the other section
of the plane. When she stood up Djamila was tall, but she weighed very little.

  When she was sitting next to Hector in a very comfortable seat that stretched out almost like a bed, she smiled for the first time, and Hector recognised the Djamila from the passport photograph. He asked her whether she still had a headache, and she said she had, but that being there made her feel better, and that Hector was too kind.

  They continued talking. Hector thought that it might help her to forget about her headache, and as he spoke to her he looked at her pupils, the way doctors do.

  They were both going to the big country where there were more psychiatrists than anywhere else in the world. Notice that we say ‘more psychiatrists than anywhere else in the world’ but we could just as well say more swimming pools, more Nobel prizewinners, more strategic bombers, more apple pies, more computers, more natural parks, more libraries, more cheer-leaders, more serial killers, more newspapers, more racoons, more of many more things, because it was the country of More, and had been for a long time. No doubt because the people who lived there had left their own countries precisely because they wanted more, especially more freedom. (The only people who hadn’t got more freedom were the natives who already lived there, but, as previously mentioned, that was in the days when people who came from countries like Hector’s tended to think that everything belonged to them.)

  Djamila was going to visit her sister who had married a citizen of that country. She was going to stay with them for a while.