Why do you cry, little Squonk?

You who crawl out of the swamp every night to look for food, and unknowingly water every plant in your path. Your eyes are big and soulful, your vision keen. Your food is plentiful, your home safe, and no predator can get the jump on you, for you sink into the murky depths at the smallest sign of danger. Other beasts live but for a day. Most never live at all. You stumbled into a comfortable life, one that isn't overly exhausting or demanding. You'll probably live to see your twilight years.

Why, then, do you cry? Why do you relinquish valuable water so freely, when creatures of the desert would fight to the death for a single drop of what you have? Your swamp is not so salty that you need to purge the sodium from your body. Yours are not crocodile tears.

No; you cry for the same reason we humans do. You cry because you must.

Can you understand me, little Squonk? Can you even imagine what a dry face might feel like? Your skin is dense and bumpy. It erupts into warts and cracks into wrinkles and retains moisture for a long time. You always glimmer in the light and slip from one's grasp. Other amphibians hold dearly to such their water, but you throw it all away. Your face has formed around your grief. Your flesh evolved to facilitate the flow of tears. Tears are part of your essential self.

Do you even know what heartache caused you to be like that? Maybe you have too much time to think, too much free time to worry and wonder. When you have no predators, the greatest danger to your survival is yourself.

Or maybe you carry, in your blood, in your genes, a painful memory you cannot shed.

Little Squonk! I think you may be more akin to us than most would admit. I think your heart is close to ours.

But we are blessed with ignorance, with blindspots and defense mechanisms against the maladies of the soul, while you, little creature, you can only weep. It is not that you are ugly; you are not. You are a wonderful creature, a pure and true heart shining in the dark, a soul deep enough to weep and endure, encased in the form that best expresses it.

Nothing's ever as hopeless as it seems, little Squonk. Though your tears are beautiful, I would like to one day see your smile.