Poll published four times during the summer of 1992 in the French newspaper Libération.

The terse and prefabricated form of the poll (“Yes, no, I don’t know, please tick the right answer”) and its positioning on the contact page were, in my eyes, already a commentary on our more or less successful pursuit of happiness, and I didn’t really expect any answers.

To my surprise, more than 40 people answered in very differents ways : philosophically, agressively, in a sad or a upbeat mood, using quotations or images.
One person wrote : “...this is the sort of question that, far more than Maastrict, deserves a referendum.”
One particularly beautiful quotation, by Jacques Prévert, was : “I’ve recognized happiness by the noise it’s made when leaving.”
And another, by the same : “You should at least try to be happy, just to give an example.”

As a way of answering, I sent everyone a little package of Seeds of Happiness (“They can grow even in the most difficult of soils”), which I made for the occasion.

I’ve kept up a correspondence with several of those who answered over the past few years.