"Attachment is the source of all suffering"-Buddha. The things we hold dear are what strengthens and destroys a man. When they are well a man’s spirits soar high but when they are failing his very soul seems twisted by raw emotion too hot to handle. Any attachment can cause the world to become chaotic, a mood can turn to malady if a man and his closest companions are subject to prolonged suffering. What is it that causes a man to feel the pain of another? The affliction of empathy is a curse that only the lonely may escape. Oh to be without attachment, what would the world look like to a man void of other people’s emotions. Friendship is a burden that a man shoulders in the hopes that feeling pain is better than nothing at all. Is that truth or just an excuse for personal weakness? Is a man with friends that share pain better off than a man with only himself to worry about? A man with attachments is like a tree, rooted to those emotions as if they were soil. A man alone is like a breeze, here long enough to be felt but forgotten shortly after he is gone. What makes a man choose to be the tree or the breeze? A sense of identity is the gift a tree gets, when the soil is good the man is good, but bad soil makes bad apples. Soil is also filled with a sense of security; a static existence is a predictable existence. The breeze however can do what it wants when it wants, it can be warm to some and cold to others as it chooses. There is no stability in a breezy existence, no structure, only a never-ending desire to continue on. So, which is the better of the two? What path should a man capable of both choose? Or is there a different path, a sort of happy medium? Like algae in a pond can a man be both bound by his roots and free to be what he wants.