Hector and the Search for Happiness (13 page)

‘You say: “I think I’m happy.” What allows you to say that? Is it comparing yourself to others?’

‘Not entirely. You can’t really know how other people experience happiness or misfortune. In fact, I’m comparing myself to myself! I think of other times in my life, and it feels like I’ve never been so happy.’

Hector found the idea of comparing yourself to yourself interesting. Comparisons can spoil your happiness (lesson no. 1), but they can also help you to tell yourself that you’re happy. Hector also thought that this meant Agnès was happier now than when she’d been with him. On the one hand he understood quite well why, but on the other it still upset him a bit, because that’s what men are like.

Since he carried on thinking without speaking, Agnès went on, ‘Of course, things aren’t always rosy. You saw us arguing about the children. But that’s normal for a couple who have children, I suppose.’

Speaking of children, Hector asked her whether having them made people happier. Agnès said that it brought moments of great joy, but also quite a few worries; you had to think about them all the time, and you could kiss goodbye to having a lie-in for years to come, and this idea alone terrified Hector.

She also worried about her children’s future in this country where children were going a bit crazy. Hector said that children in his country were also going a bit crazy, but of course, as Agnès lived in the country of More, the crazy children there were going that little bit more crazy, and so instead of every day hitting other schoolmates who weren’t as strong, or girls, or even their teachers, like in Hector’s country, they went straight ahead and shot them with weapons made for grown-ups.

‘That’s why I was complaining last night. I don’t want my children to be brought up by television and video games. But that’s what’s happening to children in rich countries and in poor countries, too. We’re very concerned about polluting the air, but not about polluting our children’s minds.’

And Agnès went on talking, because it was a subject that was very important to her. She was even doing a study on it. She would show small children a film of a man hitting a doll then leave them to play together and compare the number of times they hit each other (not very hard thankfully because they were only little). And, well, they hit each other noticeably more after they’d seen the film than before. Because, Agnès explained, children learn a lot through imitation, they’re made that way, and that’s why if your mummy and daddy are kind you’ll be kind.

You must be thinking that Agnès was a psychiatrist, but she wasn’t, she was a psychologist. A psychologist is somebody who studies how people think or why they go a bit crazy or what makes children learn at school and why some don’t, or why they hit their schoolmates. Psychologists, unlike psychiatrists, don’t have the right to prescribe pills, but they can make people take tests or choose the right picture in a box or calculate things using dominoes, or tell them what an ink stain makes them think of. And after that they know something about the way your mind works (but they don’t understand everything, it has to be said).

Hector asked Agnès if she felt happy when she was working on this study of children. Agnès said that she did, because she felt useful to others (lesson no. 13, thought Hector).

They arrived at the university where Agnès worked, and Alan too incidentally, because that’s where they’d met. What was funny was that you’d think the university dated back to the Middle Ages or just after: it had splendid old buildings with little bell towers, and pillars, and statues and rolling lawns. In fact, the university was no older than an old person, but people here had wanted their university to be as splendid as the ones in Hector’s country. And so they’d built a copy and invented a style called ‘New Medieval’. It really was the country of More.

There were a lot of students of all colours walking across the lawns, and some pretty Chinese girls in shorts who made Hector think of you-know-who, but he tried to concentrate; he had come here to work hard.

Because it was here that the important professor who was a world expert on happiness worked. He had been studying happiness for years, he gave talks on it at conferences and had become very well known — not as well known as a TV presenter, but quite well known all the same, especially among other happiness experts. Agnès knew him well; he’d been her professor. And so she had mentioned Hector to him and the important professor had agreed to talk to him, and then Hector would be able to show him his list.

Hector felt rather nervous, like before you go up to the blackboard, because although when he’d written them he’d thought his little lessons were very interesting, and even when he’d reread them the night before with Agnès and Alan, now that he was about to show them to the professor he thought they were rather silly.

He told Agnès this, but she said that he was mistaken, that the lessons were a measure of his experience, and that Hector’s way of seeing things was no less valid than the results of any laboratory experiments.

And Hector told himself that she really was a very nice girl, and that when you’re young you can sometimes be very foolish.

T
HE important professor was tiny, but he had a very long nose and a tuft of hair sticking up from his head, like the plumage of a bird. He spoke in a very loud voice and looked at Hector from time to time and said ‘huh?’ as if he expected Hector to say ‘yes, of course’. But he didn’t give him time to say that before continuing his story.

‘Happiness. We’re tearing our hair out to try to find a definition of it, for heaven’s sake. Is it joy? People will tell you that it isn’t, that joy is a fleeting emotion, a moment of happiness, which is always welcome, mind you. And then what about pleasure, huh? Oh, yes, that’s easy, everybody knows what that is, but there again it doesn’t last. But is happiness not the sum total of lots of small joys and pleasures, huh? Well, my colleagues have finally agreed on the term “Subjective wellbeing”. Ugh, how dry and lifeless, it sounds like the sort of term a lawyer would use: “My client wishes to press charges for an infringement of his subjective well-being!” I mean to say, whatever next, huh?’

Hector found him quite extraordinary as he paced up and down talking, as if he wanted to take up as much space as possible. He also sensed that he was very learned.

Finally, Hector showed him his list.

‘Oh yes,’ said the professor, putting on a small pair of spectacles, ‘Agnès was telling me about it. She’s a splendid girl, huh? I’ve known many students, but she really is very intelligent, and charming, too . . .’

While he was reading the list, Hector wondered whether the professor was going to think that he was not only not very intelligent but very naïve, or even very stupid. And so he felt nervous, but at the same time he told himself that when you’ve escaped death you shouldn’t be nervous of a professor who says ‘huh?’

The professor was reading his list. Hector had copied it out onto a clean sheet of paper, and this is what it looked like — in case you’ve forgotten:

The professor chuckled to himself as he read the list, and Hector felt uneasy, but he tried to find a comforting thought, and finally he came up with one: ‘Happiness is not attaching too much importance to what other people think.’ That might make a good lesson no. 18 to replace the one he’d crossed out.

Finally, the professor looked at the list and then looked at Hector.

‘How funny, you’ve managed to include nearly all of them!’

‘Nearly all of what?’

‘The determinants of happiness. Well, the ones that we’re researching. It’s not totally stupid, this list of yours.’

‘Do you mean to say that all these lessons could be valid?’

‘Yes, pretty much. For each lesson I can find twenty or so studies that show, for example’ — he looked at the list — ‘that our happiness depends on comparisons, like in your lesson no. 1. Look, I’m going to ask you three questions. First I’ll ask you to think about the difference between the life you have and the life you wish you had.’

Hector thought about it, and then he said that he was quite happy with his life and that above all he’d like it to continue as it was.

Of course, he would have liked to meet Ying Li again and to love Clara at the same time, but all he said to the professor was, ‘I wouldn’t mind having a more stable love life.’

The professor sighed as if to say: ‘Ah! Wouldn’t we all . . .’ And then he asked Hector to think about another difference: between his life as it was now and the best period of his life in the past.

Hector said that he had happy childhood memories, but that he felt that his life now was more interesting. He remembered that Agnès also thought that she was happier now than in the past. For Charles on the plane, it had been a little bit the other way round. He remembered having flown first class and thought he was worse off in business class.

‘Third question, third difference,’ said the professor. ‘Think about the difference between what you have and what others have.’

Hector found this question very interesting. In his country poor people were richer than most other people in the world, but knowing this didn’t make them any happier, because every day they saw their richer fellow countrymen enjoying lots of nice things that they as poor people couldn’t afford. And TV adverts reminded them of this every day. Not having much is one thing, but having less than others is a bit like feeling that you’re bottom of the class — it can make you unhappy. That was why poor people in the country of More (and in all countries for that matter) loved the beach: on the beach people are nearly all equal. Conversely, the rich liked to show that they had more than others, by buying expensive cars they didn’t really need, for example.

But Hector wasn’t too worried by comparisons. To begin with, he was fortunate enough to belong to a group of people who had more or less everything they wanted. When he was younger, at secondary school, he compared himself with boys who had more success with girls or were better at games, and sometimes it upset him, but since then he’d caught up a bit where girls were concerned, and being good at games isn’t all that important when you’re a psychiatrist. In general he didn’t compare himself very much with others. He knew people who were richer and more famous than he was, but he didn’t have the impression that they were any happier. (The proof of this was that some of them had even been to see him to complain about their lives and a few had even tried to kill themselves!) So, he didn’t really worry about it that much. Whereas Édouard, for example, often compared himself to people who were richer, but this was normal among businessmen — they’re always trying to get ahead.

‘Well,’ said the professor, ‘I think you must be fairly happy, huh? Because a colleague of mine has established that by adding together these three differences — between what we have and what we’d like to have, what we have now and the best of what we’ve had in the past, and what we have and what other people have — you get an average difference which is closely related to happiness. The smaller the difference the happier we are.’

‘But how do you measure happiness?’

‘Ah, ah! Good question,’ said the professor.

And he began pacing excitedly up and down his study again, his tuft of hair quivering, and Hector remembered that Agnès had told him that measuring happiness was the professor’s area of expertise.

And so Hector was very pleased: if he learnt how to measure happiness, he could really say that his trip had been useful!

‘
I
MAGINE that I’m a Martian,’ said the professor, ‘and that I want to understand human beings. How are you going to make me understand that you’re feeling happy?’

It was a strange question, worthy of a Martian, Hector thought. Perhaps the professor had shrunk slightly in the space-time machine — except for his nose and his tuft of hair. But Hector also knew that great scholars often had a peculiar way of looking at things, which allowed them to make discoveries. And so he tried to answer as if he were explaining to a Martian what it felt like to be happy.