La Solitude de Nos Jours

There's a quote at the beginning of a Marc Levy book, which sums up the question I keep pondering today:

"Seuls l' amour et l' amitié comblent la solitude de nos jours.  Le bonheur n'est pas le droit de chacun, c' est un combat de tous les jours.  Je crois qu' il faut savoir le vivre lorsqu' il se présente à nous."  [Orson Welles]

Roughly translated, this means: 'Only love and friendship make up for the isolation of our times.  Happiness isn't everyone's right, it's something we have to fight for every day.  I think that we have to know how to live it when it presents itself to us.'

Perhaps this refers to the need to accept that most people don't achieve happiness and if they do, it's rather fleeting.  Maybe it doesn't come on its own, but tags alongside sadness, side by side most of the time.  Afterall, don't people cry tears of joy?  Surely those tears are really the reflection of the loss that went before.  The pain that you had to endure until someone did something so kind that it was overwhelming to see how easily someone can take away that pain, that neglect, that deprivation.

Can there really be one side without the other?  I don't know if it's possible to know a true, deep sense of happiness unless it's in contrast with having known profound sorrow.  Maybe it is a result of loss and hardship that brought me to feeling both emotions simultaneously at certain moments yesterday.  Even after moments of sadness, I was amazed to find that there was some joy left over.  I was shocked that once I'd felt a tinge of sorrow, I could still be permitted to feel happy, warm, contented and safe.  

But it cannot be hung onto.  It must always live under threat of being lost or eroded or denied in the future, and that is a precarious path to have to walk.  But that's the only path there is.  Or at least, that's the only path I see ahead of me.