Hector and the Search for Happiness by Francois Lelord Page B

investigation. He asked Eduardo what made him happy in life. Eduardo reflected for a moment and said, ‘Seeing my family happy, knowing that my children won’t want for anything.’
    Eduardo’s children were grown up, and he hoped to send them to study in the big country that had more psychiatrists than anywhere else in the world. Hector asked him whether it bothered him to know that other families might be very unhappy because their children took the harmful stimulant Eduardo made (because, of course, you, like Hector, have worked it out by now).
    This time Eduardo answered straight away.
    ‘If they take it, it’s because their family’s already messed up. Their parents don’t look after them properly, all they think about is making money, or getting laid. It’s normal for kids to go off the rails!’
    ‘Okay,’ said Hector.
    He didn’t necessarily think that it was okay, but when a psychiatrist says ‘okay’, it just means ‘I understand what you’re saying.’ But he pointed out to Eduardo that lots of poor people also took this harmful drug and it made their lives even worse. Eduardo said that it was the same thing: their whole country was like a bad family which didn’t look after its children properly.
    ‘I don’t create demand,’ said Eduardo, ‘I simply respond to it.’
    Hector said that he understood, but all the same he thought that Eduardo was building his and his family’s happiness on other people’s misery. But he told himself that Eduardo had also been born in a country that was like one big very bad family. And so naturally he had a strange way of looking at things.
    For that matter, Hector’s questions might have annoyed Eduardo a bit, because he ordered a whisky from the African barman, who came over and served him. You might be thinking that not enough has been said about African people in a country where everybody is African, but the reason is that the only African people in the bar were the waiters, the barman and the receptionist, and they didn’t talk at all. The people talking were the white people, guests like Eduardo and Hector, and the men in shorts.
    When Hector told Eduardo that he was a psychiatrist, he seemed very interested. He told him that his wife was always unhappy (and yet she didn’t want for anything). And so the doctor over in his country had tried prescribing various pills, but none of them had really worked. What did Hector think?
    Hector asked for the names of the pills. Eduardo said that he had the names in his room, and he went to fetch them. In the meantime, Hector drank his whisky (because Eduardo had ordered one for him as well) and began talking to the barman. His name was Isidore. Hector asked him what made him happy. Isidore smiled and said, ‘My family not wanting for anything.’
    Hector asked if that was all.
    Isidore thought about it, and then added, ‘Going to my second job from time to time!’
    Hector understood that besides his job as a barman Isidore had another job, which he must really enjoy. What sort of job was it? Isidore started to laugh and was about to explain to Hector, but Eduardo came back with his wife’s prescription.
    Hector studied it, and found that the prescription was not quite right. The psychiatrist over there had prescribed all three main types of medication psychiatrists prescribe, but none of them in the right dose, so they couldn’t have been helping Eduardo’s wife much. He asked Eduardo a few more questions in order to find out what sort of unhappiness his wife was suffering from, and he soon saw which type of pill would work best for her. He also remembered a good psychiatrist from Eduardo’s country whom he’d met at a conference. It was understandable that Eduardo hadn’t heard of him, because this psychiatrist worked at a hospital, and he wore socks with his sandals, whereas people like Eduardo tend to know doctors who wear the same type of shoes as they do. Hector gave Eduardo his name and also the name