Is there a way to be happy?
A particular recipe?
How to say ... so much of this, so much of that one, kneads like this, you cook this ... and the result is a beautiful happy life ...
Isn't there a method to guarantee happiness?
And when is a person happy?
What is missing to me, to you, to us to be happy?
And what is happiness, then?
An abstract concept or a true reality?
A state of well-being or a vague dream never reached?
Is it possible to be happy?
Every man has the right to happiness ...
And how do you reach it? When are you sure you have achieved this goal?
This was what Giovanni thought about putting on his jacket to get out of the house.
Another day to live, another set of hours to devote to someone else who was not himself, who were not his desires, his passions, his inclinations.
Hours when he would not put himself at the center of his own attention.
Perhaps, it was said, happiness is being able to do what one wants, without restraints, without inhibitions, without any law ...
How nice, he thought, to sleep as much as he wanted, to eat at the bung, to dance without stopping, to love for an unlimited time, to sing without ever being alone, to read without ever being tired and to write, always having to talk about….
A life without "without" would have been a happy life.
Yes, he was convinced of it now: happiness poses no limits and he struggled with this idea, as he climbed the elevator, reached the ground floor, greeted the concierge and took to the street.
Eh ... he was pretty sure, happiness was certainly not having to do something habitual like getting up in the morning to go to work.
The work was certainly not present in the life of a happy man.
Every morning he formulated the same thoughts, the same considerations.
Then, fortunately, his whole day was taken by work and in the evening he was so tired that after dinner he soon fell asleep waiting for the new day and new hopes.
He walked with a firm step, thinking back to what he had left hanging in the office and turned the corner of the little-used street in which he lived to enter the busy avenue that would take him to his place of work. They were only a few blocks away and loved walking. That was the moment when he undressed himself mentally of his personal thoughts and wore those of the professional he was: a civil lawyer who saw them underdog during the day.
In court and in the office, in fact, he became the custodian of unlikely issues that his clients entrusted to him for defense.
That morning he was not engaged in hearings and had made an appointment with a childhood friend, Paolo Martelli, a well-known local architect now imbufalito against the whole world since the notary had warned him that the dead father had left the inheritance equally distributed between him and the house cat, a fine specimen of Persian blue with yellow eyes that now contended with the only child a large slice of heritage.
Could he do something? Could he appeal the inheritance? Could he get rid of the cat? Could he get hold of the inheritance? his friend had asked him on the phone the night before.
Certainly Paolo was not a happy man.
His father had equated him to the cat, in fact, he had estimated him a lot less if he had to leave a legate so generous to guarantee the animal the appropriate treatment.
Certainly the cat was a happy animal, but Paolo without a shadow of a doubt was an unhappy son.
And who knows how unhappy his elderly parent was, if he couldn't trust his son simply by giving him the kitty for the time he would survive ...
Smiling to himself he reached the studio and, after the customary greetings with the secretary, he retired to his room, arranged papers and computers and prepared for the meeting with his friend, ready to listen to the whole story as he had promised.
In the middle of the morning Paolo, introduced by the secretary, entered the study carrying in one hand his folder of documents and in the other a cage containing a fine specimen of a cat with thick gray fur, peaceful, sneaky even if evidently a little annoyed by the overwork. The man sat on one of the seats after depositing the carrier on the ground and said all in one breath:
"Here! Here is my coherent! Let's say I have a brother I didn't know existed. To him the house and to me the content: furniture, paintings, silverware and all the rest. But can you? And if I lose my cat I lose everything, understand? I have life conditioned by the cat. So I take it with me wherever I go. Never let me escape, that something happens to him ... I would lose all that my father left me and for the future his part too ". He scowled at the animal: "Help me," he said to his friend, "Please do something."