Responsibility for yourself.

There are certain things that we look to others for that is normal.  It's part of the human condition.  We sometimes look to others to validate our performance, a pat on the back, a job well done can go a long way to encouraging someone to gain more personal growth and they may ultimately surpass their goals.  We look to others for help when we're ill if we need to.  We look to others for compassion when we're feeling blue.  Nothing like a close friend that can make you laugh and see things in a different light that will help relieve some stress and make a bad patch a little bit better.

 

Happiness, however, is your sole responsibility.  You and you alone are responsible for being happy.

 

If you are not, then it is you that has to sit down and try to work out why you are not and what you can do to change it so you are.  If you push your own personal responsibility to someone else and allow them to be responsible for it, that person will fail you.  Doing that creates a perfect storm of try and fail, anger and regret.  There will be unhappiness, there will be an attempt to restore that happiness and in the short-term it may work.  The cycle will grow and sooner or later will become a burden on both people.  One will look on the other with disdain and the other will wonder what they're doing wrong.  Whatever their relationship, it will fall apart.  That much is pre-determined. 

 

If you're able, please, by all means, brighten someone's day with a kind word, a joke to make someone laugh, simple polite conversation, but never assume responsibility for someone else's happiness.  It'll make you miserable.

 

It won't end well.