Hector and the Search for Happiness

by Francois Lelord

  Hector would have liked to see the photographs of the young women, but the professor had already begun explaining another study. They’d followed the progress of twins from childhood and tried to discover whether they were both equally happy, even when afterwards they’d led very different lives. It required doing lots of calculations, of the kind Alan liked.

  The professor began to explain the calculations on a blackboard and Hector told him not to trouble himself, but the professor insisted. ‘Yes, yes, you’ll see, you’ll understand, huh?’ Hector told himself that he was a bit like those skiers who take you up the steep slopes and tell you you’ll have great fun, as described at the beginning.

  Hector was getting a little tired, and so he asked, ‘Has anyone done any calculations on the lessons on my list?’

  The professor turned around, irritated. ‘Yes, yes, that’s what I was about to show you.’

  He looked at Hector’s list and told him that, thanks to a lot of studies and calculations, they’d shown that if you compared yourself to others and didn’t find yourself wanting, if you had no money or health problems, if you had friends, a close-knit family, a job you liked, if you were religious and practised your religion, if you felt useful, if you went for a little stroll from time to time, and all of this in a country that was run by not very bad people, where you were taken care of when things went wrong, your chances of being happy were greatly increased.

  Hector was pleased: according to what the professor said, he had every chance of being happy. Apart from the fact that he didn’t exactly have a close family, and wasn’t very religious — still less was somebody who practised his religion. On the other hand, he knew a lot of people who were married and lived in a perpetual hell of arguments or eternal boredom, and among his patients were very religious people who practised their religion and were very unhappy because they always thought they were bad even when they were being very good. He told this to the professor.

  ‘Well I can’t help that!’ said the professor. ‘These are our findings. Single men are much less happy than married men and for that matter they have more health problems. And according to all our estimates religious people who practise their religion are happier than everybody else. Of course all this is true on average and may not be true in individual cases. But look at all the studies that have been done!’

  And he showed Hector a large cupboard containing stacks of papers. These were hundreds of articles written by people like the professor, or Agnès.

  Hector felt rather proud at having discovered with the sole aid of his little notebook what people like the professor or Agnès had discovered after carrying out lots of complicated studies. But that’s science: it isn’t enough just to think a thing, you must try to verify whether it’s true. Otherwise people could think and say what they liked, and if those people were fashionable, then everybody would believe them. (Hector recalled that there’d been quite a few fashionable people like that in psychiatry, who liked thinking, and especially talking, but who hated verifying. And as a result they’d said quite a lot of silly things.)

  ‘Well,’ said the professor, ‘now I’m going to show you something really interesting.’

  He took Hector down to the basement. They walked into a large tiled room. In the middle was a huge, rather complicated-looking contraption and an armchair hooked up to some enormous machines that were humming above it, and Hector told himself that this was it, this was a space-time machine and the professor was going to take him on a tour of Mars.

  HECTOR DOESN’T GO TO MARS

  STANDING next to the machine was a lady in a white coat. She wore glasses and looked a bit like a schoolmistress, but when you got closer you could see that she was quite pretty.

  ‘My dear Rosalyn!’ the professor said.

  He seemed all excited, well, even more excited than before.

  ‘My dear John . . .’ the lady replied, smiling.

  ‘I’ve brought you an ideal subject for your experiment: a psychiatrist!’ the professor said, introducing Hector.

  ‘Experiment?’ asked Hector.

  ‘Yes, but don’t worry, it’s completely harmless. Come along, Rosalyn hasn’t got all day, there’s a very long queue!’

  And Hector found himself sitting in the armchair surrounded by the machines humming above his head. He saw Rosalyn and the professor, who were standing behind a window in front of a control panel that was as complicated as the one in a big plane.

  ‘Now,’ said the professor, ‘I’m going to ask you to think of three situations in any order: you’re going to imagine yourself in a situation that makes you very happy, in a situation that makes you very sad, and lastly in one where you’ve felt very scared. It’s easier to choose from memories. I’ll tell you when you can begin imagining the first situation. But don’t, whatever you do, tell me which one it is!’

  Hector preferred to begin with the worst. And so he imagined himself sitting in the storeroom that smelt of dead rat, thinking about the people he loved whom he was never going to see again and who would also be very sad. He remembered it so clearly that he felt his eyes prick with tears, even though when he’d been in the real situation he hadn’t even cried.

  ‘Good,’ said the professor, ‘now imagine the second situation.’

  This time, Hector imagined that he was watching Clara sleeping. As she worked so hard, she would often sleep in on Sundays. And he would wake up before her and he loved watching her sleeping; it made him very happy, and at moments like those he felt that nothing could go wrong between them.

  (You might be wondering why he didn’t think of Ying Li. Well, because it didn’t make him feel exactly happy thinking of Ying Li so far away in China.)

  ‘Good,’ said the professor, ‘and now the third situation.’

  And Hector pictured himself on the old plane that was vibrating and whirring, with the ducks and chickens making a lot of noise before they landed.

  ‘All right, we’re done,’ said Rosalyn.

  Hector climbed out of the armchair, taking care not to bang his head, and the professor said to him, ‘First you thought of the situation that made you sad, then the one that made you happy and finally the one when you were scared.’

  Hector knew that the professor would be able to tell (he had heard about this type of machine) but he was still surprised.

  The professor took Hector over to the complicated-looking control panel while Rosalyn turned a few knobs. An image appeared on a colour monitor.

  ‘Look,’ the professor said, ‘look!’

  It looked like an intricate stain made up of lots of pretty colours ranging from very dark blue to bright orange. In fact, it was a photograph of Hector’s brain, as though somebody had taken a very fine slice and spread it out flat on a piece of glass.

  ‘This is a map of the oxygen consumption in your brain. The blue areas aren’t consuming much. The orange areas, in contrast, are very active.’

  Rosalyn pressed some more buttons and three smaller images of Hector’s brain appeared in a row. It was clear that in each one different parts of the brain were active.

  ‘Sadness, happiness and fear,’ said the professor, pointing at each image. ‘Fabulous, isn’t it?’

  ‘Happiness is in this area, then,’ Hector said, pointing to a little orange spot glowing on the screen, ‘on the right side of the brain.’

  ‘Because you’re a man,’ said Rosalyn. ‘In women the area is more diffuse, on both sides of the brain. And similarly when they’re sad, for that matter.’

  She explained to Hector that since they’d begun using this kind of machine, they’d realised that the brains of men and women didn’t work in quite the same way, even when they read or did calculations. Everybody had suspected this for a long time, mind you. But, as previously mentioned, science is about verifying things.

  ‘Imagine if we discovered a drug that activated that area,’ Hector said; ‘we’d be permanently happy.’

  ‘But we already have! Rosalyn,
could you show him the images of the Japanese men’s brains?’

  And now three images of Japanese men’s brains appeared (you’d have to know beforehand that they were Japanese otherwise it would be difficult to guess).

  ‘Now, look closely,’ said the professor.

  This time, all the brains were bright orange. Above all, in the happiness area. The Japanese men must have been really happy when these were taken.

  ‘But what is this drug?’ Hector asked.

  He wanted to try some immediately and even take some home for Clara.

  ‘It’s saké,’ said Rosalyn. ‘These were taken a few minutes after they’d drunk a large glass of saké.’

  Well, thought Hector, that explained why everybody felt so good when they drank saké or beer or champagne or the wines Édouard liked.

  ‘But look at the next ones,’ Rosalyn added. ‘These images were taken three hours later.’

  Here, the Japanese men’s brains looked bluer than at the outset. They even looked like images of sadness. The Japanese men can’t have been in very good shape when these were taken. When you saw these images you almost wanted to give them more saké to reactivate their brains (some people have worked all this out on their own without the need for this type of experiment).

  Rosalyn also showed Hector images of the brains of men who’d been shown pictures of very beautiful women, and women who were only pretty. And, well, when they saw the very beautiful women, the areas that were activated in these men’s brains were the same ones that go very bright after taking the harmful drug produced by Eduardo! This confirmed Hector’s idea that you should beware of beauty, but, alas, it was so difficult!

  Rosalyn explained that with this type of machine you could find out lots of things about the way healthy people’s brains worked, but also about the way they worked when people were sick, and which areas drugs affected. She even showed Hector the effect psychotherapy had on somebody who was very scared of going out of his house. After therapy — which consisted of gradually getting him used to going out again — the images of his brain had gone back to normal!

  Hector said that he found this very interesting. He was glad he knew which bit of his brain was being activated when he was happy.

  ‘In fact, your images are like seeing the brain smile.’

  Rosalyn and the professor looked at one another.

  ‘The brain smiling!’ said the professor. ‘What a nice idea!’

  And he explained to Hector that these images were very useful for knowing how the brain worked, but that they didn’t explain happiness any more than your smile explains why you are happy.

  Hector noticed that Rosalyn was smiling as she listened to him. Earlier, when they’d been looking at the images on the screen, out of the corner of his eye he’d seen the professor and Rosalyn kiss.

  Which proves, in case you still had any doubts, that the professor definitely wasn’t a Martian.

  HECTOR WITNESSES AN EXPERIMENT

  THE professor took Hector to lunch outside at one of the university cafés, because in this town the weather was always good except for two weeks in winter when you had to put on a sweater in the evening.

  They were sitting facing a huge lawn and Hector was enjoying watching the squirrels, which weren’t afraid of people and came up to beg for food. At the other tables were students, students and professors, professors and professors, all mixed together, because it was the kind of university where students and professors talk to each other.

  ‘Well,’ the professor said, tucking into his chicken, ‘do you feel that you know more about happiness?’

  Hector said that he did, but, right at that moment, he felt something tugging at his trouser leg: it was a squirrel wanting some of his lunch. And this made him think. Did the squirrel realise how lucky he was to be there? Or on the contrary did he spend his life wondering whether he might not be better off somewhere else, or feeling that he didn’t have the life he deserved? In the end, it depended on the comparisons the squirrel was able to make: he must have seen the large portion of fried squid on the plate in front of Hector. The squirrel could either think that the large portion was a stroke of luck because it increased his chances of getting some squid, or he could consider it a terrible injustice that Hector should have such a large portion all to himself; or he might even feel that it proved that he, the squirrel, was a miserable wretch (especially if his squirrel-wife reminded him of it every evening when he went home). The squirrel’s happiness depended on how he looked at things.

  So Hector said to the professor, ‘Among my patients are people with no money or health problems, who have close-knit families, interesting and useful jobs, but who are quite unhappy: they are fearful about the future, dissatisfied with themselves, they see only the bad side of their situation. There was one determinant of happiness missing from your list just now: people’s way of looking at things. In short, people whose glass is always half full are clearly happier than those whose glass is always half empty.’

  ‘Aha!’ said the professor. ‘That’s a typical psychiatrist’s observation. But you’re right, it’s an important point.’

  And he explained to Hector that there was a big debate among professors of Happiness Studies. There were those who thought that you were happy above all because your life was full of positive things or events, like in Hector’s list. Other professors disagreed: they thought that happiness depended above all on your way of looking at things, on that idea of the glass being half full or half empty.

  ‘Colleagues of mine who defend the second idea tend to think that happiness levels are a bit like blood pressure or weight: they may vary from time to time according to circumstances, but generally they return to the same basic level, which is different in each individual. They study people who have experienced great success or great misfortune and observe that after a few months their moods return more or less to what they were before.’

  ‘And what do you think?’ Hector asked.

  ‘A little of both. We depend on circumstance, but some people have more of a gift for happiness than others.’

  And Hector thought of Djamila, who was so ill that it was a great misfortune, but who was still happy when she thought that her younger brothers weren’t going to die in the war.

  Hector took out his little notebook and wrote down a lesson, which he thought was very important:Lesson no. 20: Happiness is a certain way of seeing things.

  The professor was vigorously chewing his chicken. Hector had only ever seen him in a good mood. And this made him ask another question.

  ‘And why do some people have more of a gift for happiness than others?’

  The professor went back to the studies of the twins and the young women, but luckily there was no blackboard and so he couldn’t begin explaining the calculations again. Basically, having a gift for happiness was a bit like being good at maths or games: it depended partly on the development of the brain after you were born, and even before, but also on how your parents or other adults had brought you up when you were small. And of course on your own efforts and subsequent encounters.

  ‘Nature or nurture,’ said the professor. ‘Whichever way, the parents are to blame!’

  This made him laugh loudly, and the people sitting near them turned around, but when they saw that it was the professor, it made them smile — they all knew him.

  Just then, they saw Rosalyn arrive, only she was no longer wearing a white coat, but a pretty blue flowery summer dress; she was talking to an attractive man who kept looking at her, and they went and sat down together at a table.

  The professor stopped talking. Hector could see that his good humour had vanished. He turned pale as he watched Rosalyn and the man begin eating their lunch, chatting and smiling.

  ‘That bastard Rupert,’ muttered the professor through gritted teeth.

  He looked very unhappy and very angry and Hector knew that at moments like this it was good to talk. And so he asked the professor why Rupert was a ba
stard.

  ‘Not only does he steal my research grants, but he’s always hovering around Rosalyn!’ replied the professor.

  And he explained that, like him, Rupert was a professor, specialising in the difference between men and women’s brains. He used Rosalyn’s machine quite a lot for his experiments, and so he saw her fairly often.

  ‘And because the difference between men and women is fashionable, the media are interested in what he does and Rupert appears on women’s TV programmes. The dean likes that, it’s good for the university, and so he gets the biggest research grants in the department.’

  And Hector could see the professor suffering as he watched Rosalyn and Rupert chatting and laughing.

  Hector took a mental note of a lesson he would write down later:Lesson no. 21: Rivalry poisons happiness.

  If you thought about it, people had always suffered because of rivalries, and had even gone to war: they wanted something the other had or to take the boss’s place.

  Fortunately, right at that moment Agnès arrived, and this served as a distraction. She was also wearing a nice dress, and when he saw her looking so pretty and smiling, Hector wondered whether he would be happier now if they’d been married when they were young. But perhaps they’d have argued about the children or grown bored of seeing one another all the time and would be divorced by now like everybody else.

  ‘So,’ said Agnès, sitting down beside them, ‘is Hector’s brain normal?’

  Hector replied, ‘Normal for a psychiatrist,’ and this made Agnès laugh, though not the professor, who was trying not to look at Rupert and Rosalyn, but was clearly still suffering. Since Agnès was clever, she immediately understood what was going on. And so she moved opposite the professor, so that at least he couldn’t see Rupert and Rosalyn. And she started talking to him about a recent article she’d read on the difference between feeling joy, being in a good mood and happiness, and the professor quickly became excited again and his good mood came back.