When I was at Esperanto House in January, someone gave me a book with the request that I review it for a British Esperanto magazine. I couldn’t refuse without being rude, and anyway I would never refuse to accept a free book, but I knew nothing about its contents, only that it was something to do with happiness.

Almost three months passed, and I still hadn’t read the book. I had a lot of books for Christmas, and I still have a mountain of unread books in my bedroom! However in two weeks I’m going to the British Esperanto Congress, where I’ll very probably meet the man who gave me the book. So, it occurred to me this afternoon that I should at least open it before the congress!

I did that this evening… and immediately wished that I’d never accepted the proposal to review it, because I have nothing good to say about it. It’s not a novel, it consists of short contributions from Esperantists everywhere in the world (although mainly from people in Romania and neighbouring countries) on the theme “When I was happiest in my life”.

I don’t normally think much of those sort of books. I’m not saying, however, that it couldn’t be an interesting idea, putting together different experiences of happiness… if the experiences contributed were worth reading. Unfortunately the majority of the experiences which I have read so far haven’t been. Yes, it’s a beautiful thing when someone gives birth to a child, but to read ten times one after the other “The happiest day of my life was when my first daughter was born” very quickly becomes tedious. For me, even worse is the number of people who have contributed with “the happiest day of my life was the day on which I learnt Esperanto”

Of course Esperanto is a beautiful language, and it can give its speakers many advantages, but I nevertheless find it slightly nauseating when people speak like that… as if Esperanto was some sort of strange, crazy religion… and I certainly find it nauseating to read a whole book of such comments. Now I understand perfectly why the editor gave me the book – he wanted to save himself the pain of a review!

What I will say in the review I have no idea, but while I was thinking about that, the question itself slightly infected me, and I started to wonder when I have been happiest in my life up to now. It’s a difficult question – I can think of some years which were better than other years, but every long period of time has to contain both good and bad experiences. Because of that I decide only to consider moments, and focus on those during which I had a very strong feeling of joy.

So if we are talking about moments, the happiest moment of my life occurred in Toulouse (France) during September 2007. I can’t remember the exact date, but it was a Thursday evening and I was in an English pub. I was already slightly drunk. Well, I don’t think that I’d ever before and possibly never since drunk so much wine during one day as I did that evening. I was getting drunk on purpose, because I was very unhappy. I was in France with someone that I loved, and as far as I understood right then, that person was imminently intending to relocate to the other side of the world – in short, we would probably never see each other again. That Thursday was therefore one of the unhappiest Thursdays of my entire life – a day during which I had to constantly battle against my emotions in order not to burst into tears – it seemed to me that the world was going to end tomorrow. And then, suddenly and completely unexpectedly, that person informed me that in fact he wasn’t going to go abroad anymore. I needed a few minutes to believe it, but afterwards I had a feeling of joy so strong that I’m not even capable of describing it. The contrast with the despair I experienced beforehand was immense.

So, that would be my response if I were going to contribute to that kind of book. I hope, however, that I never will. The personal memories of other people don’t become an interesting theme for a book simply because those people happen to have learnt Esperanto.

If you don’t believe me, you can buy a copy of the book here But if you die of boredom while reading it, don’t blame me!