From the pen of a dear friend:

The brevity and fraility of happiness amazes me. Happiness is never permanent. It comes in moments, like rain drops that come and then crumble. It comes in a smile, a gaze, a breeze...In the rays of the sun, in laughter, in tears. In memories, in dreams, in knowledge, and in power. Happiness is fabricated. It's created and destroyed in the mind of who beholds it. So someone tell me why we keep on trying to create happiness for others? Is it because our own happiness can be demolished so easily by the simple discontentment in another? A frown, a crease in the fore head, a gleam in the eyes, and that inexplicable and excruciatingly tangible sense you feel when those you care for are unhappy. It lingers in the air and seeps into you, creating nothing but an abyss, some dull ache  where that happiness was. Why do we allow multiple webs to bind our limbs?  Why do we smile, why do we embrace, why do we even communicate when our  individualistic and allegedly specific emotions are so intertwined with others?