The Man Who Wanted to Be Happy

by Laurent Gounelle

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if there is one thing I’m afraid I’m really not cut out for, it’s managing people.”

  “How do you know that?” he asked, looking slightly amused.

  “My principal had to be away for a day, and he asked me to replace him so that, if necessary, there was someone in charge in the school. And, as though on purpose, it happened. One of my colleagues was taken ill while teaching, and I had to allocate his pupils to the other classes. But each class had its own timetable, and the pupils I entrusted to each teacher had to stay to the time scheduled in their original class. Some teachers protested, refusing to do overtime that wasn’t planned in advance. I had to try to negotiate with each of them. To no avail. It ended in a nightmare: I gathered all the pupils together in my classroom, which was too small to take everyone in. Some started crying. I wasn’t in control; it was a mess. The next day, I could read the contempt on my principal’s face. I told myself I would never try to manage people again.”

  “You had difficulties in this area on one occasion, and you conclude that you’re not meant for it.”

  “More than just difficulties: failure.”

  “You never tried again?”

  “I was careful not to.”

  “Have you ever looked at a baby learning to walk?”

  “Thanks for the comparison.”

  “Babies have an enormous amount to teach us. Watch a baby learning to walk: you think he succeeds at the first attempt? He tries to stand up, and—oops!—down he goes. It’s a total failure, and yet he starts again straightaway. He stands up again and … down he goes! A baby will fall on average two thousand times before he can walk.”

  He smiled and added, “If every baby were like you, towns would be swarming with people crawling on all fours.”

  “In a word, you’re telling me that I’ve come up with yet another little limiting belief on the basis of one failure.”

  “Yes, and no doubt you need to do a proper management training course.”

  “As I said, that would take time and money, and I don’t have much of either.”

  “I don’t think it costs more than a vacation in Bali.”

  “I don’t like interfering with my vacations or my weekends. For me, time off is sacred.”

  “It’s for you to choose which is more important: fulfilling your dream or taking advantage of your time off,” he said in a perfectly neutral tone that left me free to make up my mind.

  “I want to fulfill my dream, but it would be tough to go without my vacations!”

  “You said that fulfilling this dream would make you happy. Do vacations make you happy?”

  “That would be saying a lot. Let’s say they give me pleasure, and I’m attached to them.”

  “There are circumstances where you have to make choices, and therefore give up things you like, to go toward things that mean more,” he said quite simply.

  “I hate giving anything up.”

  “If you give nothing up, you are refraining from making choices. And when you refrain from choosing, you refrain from living the life you want.”

  He said that gently, his eyes full of goodness. As someone who had often felt that avoiding decisions was sparing himself suffering, I now felt I was contributing to my own unhappiness in this way.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he went on. “I’m not trying to convince you not to have holidays anymore. I just want you to be aware that you can’t fulfill the dream of your life if you’re not prepared to exert yourself and, if necessary, make a few sacrifices.”

  Of course, it seemed common sense, and yet one doesn’t become capable of effort and sacrifice on the basis of a simple decision. I felt that some people were born like that, endowed with this ability. That was clearly not my case.

  “Following one’s path in order to be able to fulfill oneself completely is sometimes like climbing a mountain. Until you’ve done it, you don’t know that the effort it demands increases the satisfaction you feel on arrival. The greater the effort is, the more intense the happiness and the longer it will remain engraved in you.”

  I got the message loud and clear, and was grateful to him for not having explicitly commented on my avoidance of the climb up Mount Skouwo.

  “I will have to find a means,” he said, as if he was talking to himself, “of making you consider choice, effort, and sacrifice.”

  I was so lucky to have this man interested in me to the point of thinking about how to get around my failures to keep my commitments, which he was doing so that, in spite of everything, I could learn what I had to learn!

  “We’ll leave it there for today,” he went on, “but for tomorrow, I’d like you to project yourself forward a few months, imagining that you have finally got all the skills you lack at the moment. I want you to put yourself in the shoes of a photographer and tell me how you feel.”

  “Right.”

  “One last thing: I had promised to give you a task to carry out in order to rid you of this fear of going up to people to ask them for help, this fear of being rejected.”

  “Yes.”

  “Right, here you are: we will meet again tomorrow, and by then you will have gone up to people of your choice and asked them things, anything, but with one goal in mind.”

  “Which is?”

  “Getting a negative response from them.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You heard me: you must take steps so that the people you ask reject your request. More precisely, you must make them clearly say no to you. They must say that word. And your task is to obtain five no’s by tomorrow.”

  “That shouldn’t be too difficult.”

  “Then have fun. I’ll expect you here tomorrow morning,” he said, making as though he was leaving.

  “Just one thing: I’m leaving Bali on Saturday to go home.”

  “Already? I had intended to see you three or four more times.”

  “That’s possible tomorrow and Friday, but on Saturday I’ve got my plane in the afternoon. Or perhaps we could meet in the morning?”

  “On Saturdays, I’m not available in the morning.”

  “Really?”

  “If you want us to meet one last time on Saturday, all you have to do is change your ticket and go home Sunday!” he said, as though it were obvious.

  “That’s not so easy. The type of ticket I’ve got has a hefty surcharge for any change of date. And I go back to work on Monday. The flight is so long I would have to go directly from the airport to my class. I’d rather avoid—”

  “We’ll see tomorrow if there are still important things left for you to discover and if it’s really necessary to see each other again on Saturday.”

  13

  I WAS SUDDENLY very aware of what little time I had left before my departure, and I wanted to get things done without delay. I had understood during this session that the tasks he gave me to do between meetings were not meaningless, and now I had my heart set on achieving those he had set for me that day.

  Admittedly, I was not enthusiastic about the idea of doing what I hated: going up to people to ask them to do something for me, but I was curious to see what I would get out of it in the end, since—I was sure of this now—everything the healer asked me to do had a purpose.

  So I went to Ubud, a place where I knew I could find Westerners. Going up to Balinese would have been a waste of time; they didn’t know how to say no.

  How was I going to start? I had to formulate requests in such a way that they would be refused. In short, I had to make sure I ended with the result that, normally, I took great care to avoid. So, five times, I was going to hear the final no of people dismissing me. Great.

  The main street was fairly lively in the midafternoon. Perfect: I would be able to hide my repeated disgraces more easily.

  “Taxi! Taxi!” Balinese were calling to tourists all over the place. One of them spoke to me.

  “I haven’t any money on me. Can you take me to Kuta for fre
e?” I said with a laugh.

  “It’s fifty thousand rupiahs. You can pay on the way back,” he said with a broad smile.

  “No, I have no money. Can you make it a present?”

  “Okay, you’re nice. For you, it’s thirty thousand rupiahs.”

  “No. For free. A present.”

  “Okay, twenty thousand rupiahs.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Look, we’ll go to Kuta, and we’ll discuss the fare. We’ll reach an agreement. Come on, in you get!”

  “No, it’s okay. I’ll go some other way, thank you.”

  I was more and more embarrassed.

  “Come on, get in. We’ll come to some agreement.”

  “It’s okay, thanks—thanks a lot.”

  “Come on!”

  “No, thank you, I’ve changed my mind. I’m not going to Kuta anymore. Bye.”

  He watched me walk away, amused, as though to say, “These Westerners are really weird.”

  Right, one attempt wasted. I had heard five no’s, but I was saying them! In any case, why had I gone up to a Balinese, when I’d decided that was pointless? No doubt because it was easy. The Balinese were very mild and very nice, and they put me more at ease than my compatriots and their neighbors. I had to face the obvious: I was so afraid of being rejected that I preferred to increase the difficulty of the exercise rather than face my fear. Come on, I was going to summon up my courage, face my anxiety, quickly get my five no’s, and run and hide on my deserted beach.

  I looked around. There were numerous people on the narrow pavement of the main street. Some were coming out of art galleries, while others were going into magnificent cafés whose postcolonial design was clearly aimed at Westerners. People were taking care as they walked not to trample the offerings scattered on the ground.

  I had to take the plunge, even if it meant randomly choosing someone and asking the first thing that popped into my mind. Then I spotted a large American woman in a turquoise skirt and a pink blouse. She was coming out of an ice cream parlor, holding a large cone overflowing with ice cream.

  “What a magnificent ice cream!” I said to her.

  “Delicious!” she replied, her eyes gleaming.

  Her lips were shining, slicked by the ice cream.

  “Can I have a lick?” I forced myself to ask.

  “Oh, aren’t you bold!” she said, her eyes sparkling.

  I could read in her eyes that letting me put my lips on the ice cream was virtually tantamount to having me kiss her.

  “Can I, or can’t I?”

  “Of course you can, darling,” she replied, coming closer and looking at me hungrily.

  “No, I was joking, I was joking,” I said, making myself laugh.

  “Don’t be afraid—you can have a lick. Go on.”

  “No, thank you, I just said it for nothing … for nothing. Right, so long. Enjoy your ice cream!”

  I left her standing there in disbelief, her fingers frozen on her cone, the ice cream slowly running down her hand.

  Another failure. With collateral damage. I was bright red, and I was angry with myself for perhaps having offended someone. I walked faster and turned off down the first side street I came across, so I could take a few moments to gather my scattered wits. I was wondering what my next request would be, when I saw on a wooden gate a notice announcing PRINGGA JUWITA. I walked forward and saw through the dense vegetation the bungalows of a hotel hidden under the trees. I was going up to it when two tourists walked out of the gate.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “are you staying in the hotel?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m staying on the east side of the island. My car has just broken down, and it won’t be repaired until tomorrow. I have absolutely no money on me to stay in a hotel. I know my request is out of place, but would you by any chance allow me to sleep in your room tonight? I don’t want to spend the night outside.”

  They looked at each other in surprise for a moment, then one of them said, “Your car’s broken down?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t ask the garage man to put you up?”

  “No.”

  “People are very hospitable here; he can perhaps accommodate you or recommend you to one of his neighbors. I’d like to, but our room is quite small. Do you want me to ask at the hotel? We’ve been here for a week, and they’re beginning to know us. I know they’re full, but I’m sure they would know someone who could put up a friend of one of their customers.”

  “No, I’ll manage, thank you. It’s very kind of you.”

  “As you wish.”

  “Thanks all the same.”

  “Best of luck.”

  “Thanks. Bye-bye.”

  Heavens, couldn’t they just have said no? As I watched them disappear around the corner, I began to have the impression that it was going to be harder than I thought.

  Another tourist left the hotel at that moment, and I was preparing to repeat my request when I stopped in my tracks: I was suddenly afraid that he might hear my words as a proposition.

  I retraced my steps to the main street. Still as many people. I must find something so outrageous that people would be obliged to refuse. Let’s think, let’s think, let’s think … money. Yes, that’s it, money. As soon as you hit their pocket, people get wary and become a lot more direct.

  I passed the entrance to the post office and went up to the first person who came out. She was in her 50s, gray hair cut very short, somewhat masculine-looking—the assertive type who has no difficulty saying no. The ideal prey. I already liked her.

  “Forgive me for troubling you, but I really need to make an important phone call abroad. I’ve no money on me. Would you be so kind as to give me five hundred rupiahs so that I can phone from the post office?”

  “You’ve got an urgent call to make?” she asked in a fairly authoritarian way.

  “Yes.”

  “Where are you calling?”

  She was looking me straight in the face with a frown.

  “The States.”

  “Will you be long?”

  It felt a bit like being questioned by the police.

  “Yes, five minutes, perhaps six.”

  “Follow me to my hotel,” she ordered. “It’s just next door. I use the hotel phone with a prepaid card, which costs next to nothing. But you can use it for three minutes exactly, no more.”

  “Unfortunately, that’s not going to be enough. Could you allow six minutes?”

  I didn’t recognize myself. I would never have had the audacity to ask for that before, especially from a lady who was being so extremely kind as to grant three minutes of her phone card to help out a stranger.

  “I’m sure you’ll manage in three minutes. Come on!” she said, pulling me along. “You’ll learn to be concise. It’s very useful in life!”

  Honestly, everyone wanted to give me advice about my life.

  “No, but … I don’t want to put you out by going to your hotel. Don’t worry, I’ll manage.”

  “You’re not putting me out,” she affirmed, in an authoritative voice, continuing to advance, showing me the way.

  “But you’ll probably need it yourself. I don’t want to eat into your phone credit.”

  “Come on. If it were a problem, I wouldn’t have offered.”

  Ten minutes later, I was calling my home number to have a rushed dialogue with my answering machine. I hung up after two minutes.

  “You were right: two minutes was long enough.”

  “Perfect! Right. Your problem’s sorted out?” she asked like the perfect know-it-all.

  “Yes, I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “In that case, don’t try!”

  “Right then … good-bye—enjoy the rest of your stay!”

  “Good-bye and remember: in life you need to know how to aim straight at the goal!”

  She watched me walk off and, when I turned around ten yards further on, was smiling, obviously pleased with herself—and a l
ong way from imagining that she had acted contrary to my wishes.

  Dejected, I went into the first café I saw, which was called Yogi’s, to have a cool drink. At this rate, it would take me a week to get my five no’s. It was depressing. Once I was through the door, the tranquillity contrasted sharply with my weariness and at once enveloped me in a feeling of well-being. The light subdued by elegant wooden venetian blinds, low armchairs, low tables, music by Sha’aban Yahya quietly playing, customers speaking in hushed tones—this was the ideal place to stay for a few minutes and recharge my batteries. I ordered an iced tea as I sank into one of the armchairs, allowing the built-up tension to drop. I let my eyelids close for a few moments and freed the air in my lungs in a long, silent sigh. I had the impression I’d forgotten to breathe for an hour. The new air I inhaled cooled my nostrils, and the sweetness of its mixed perfumes of tea and incense soothed me. Well-being spread in me, running along my respiratory system to its tiniest ramifications. I stayed awhile like this, as though weightless, emptying my mind.

  When I opened my eyes again, I saw a young woman, like an apparition, sitting on a pouf a few yards away from me. I would have sworn she wasn’t there when I came in—unless she was already there and the torment in my mind had made her invisible until I relaxed. She was very thin, and her narrow back, which I was seeing in profile, showed a pronounced natural curve. Her long brown hair was tied at the neck, showing enough of it for me to see how delicate it was. She was absorbed in a book that was resting on a low table, and her right hand was mechanically stirring the little spoon in the cup of steaming tea. I observed her for a long time, admiring her natural grace. She broke off to raise the cup to her lips, pretty, full lips that made me think of a raspberry. She put the cup back down, delicately turning her head in my direction, and her eyes settled on me as if, aware of my presence, she had been waiting for the right moment to pay attention to me. Her eyes met mine and didn’t turn away for a time that seemed an eternity. My eyes were so caught up in hers that I didn’t even dare blink anymore. I had the impression that the distance that separated us was lessening, as though someone were using a zoom lens and all that was around us had become blurred or disappeared. I was surrounded by nothingness before the eye of a cyclone of beauty that was sucking me in, like a black hole. The background music seemed a long way away, and at the same time, it could have been coming from inside me. The young woman was not smiling, and her face was perfectly motionless. Only her delicate nostrils rose imperceptibly in time with her breathing. It would have been futile to try to decipher her thoughts, to understand what her eyes meant. What we were experiencing was beyond thought, beyond language, beyond understanding. Her soul was speaking to my soul, which was answering. It concerned only them, and it was pointless to seek a meaning for something that was bigger than us. In any case, I wanted nothing, needed nothing. I was no longer me; I was beyond me. I had perhaps reached, for a few moments, that dimension where people join together and commune without speaking.