The narrator reflects on a conversation with a woman who acknowledges the transient nature of happiness. While she expresses her current joy, he struggles to grasp the concept of happiness itself, likening it to the complexity of love—both are challenging to define and understand. This highlights a deeper existential contemplation around the fleeting nature of emotions.

He contrasts these significant words like "happy" and "love" with more straightforward ones like "punk" and "cheap," suggesting that the former are often subjective and hard to pin down. While he feels more comfortable with harsher, more concrete terms, he recognizes that discussing profound concepts often requires a certain naivety or belief that he finds hard to maintain.