"Solitude -- the feeling and knowledge that one is alone, alienated from the world and oneself -- is not an exclusively Mexican characteristic. All people, at some moment in their lives, feel themselves to be alone. And they are. To live is to be separated from what we were in order to approach what we are going to be in the mysterious future. Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone, and the only one who seeks out another. His nature -- if that word can be used in reference to man, who has 'invented' himself by saying 'No' to nature -- consists in his longing to realize himself in another. Man is nostalgia and a search for communion. Therefore, when he is aware of himself he is aware of his lack of another, that is, of his solitude." (Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude, page 195)
To me this actually means a lot. It's pretty weird, but I honestly relate to this paragraph a lot. I refer a lot to etymology when I am understanding the root of something, so I looked up the root of the definition of solitude. The definition is stated above as the feeling and knowledge that one is alone. So I searched for the etymology of "alone". The word comes from Middle English and literally meant "all one". That is interesting to me because Paz says, "when [man] is aware of himself he is aware of his lack of another, that his, of his solitude." So what I am trying to say is that the very root of the word "alone" acknowledges that you cannot be alone with out other people. It also acknowledges that everyone is alone to some degree: "all one", all people are one or singular in and of themselves. We are all individuals and separate from each other to a certain degree.
This made me think immediately of Lilo and Stitch. I don't know if you have ever seen this movie, but basically Stitch, one of the main characters, is an alien from outer space. He got lost and landed on planet earth in the Hawaiian Islands. Stitch is very much a solitary character but he lands himself in a society that is completely founded in the principle of "Ohana", which is Hawaiian for "family". As you watch this little clip I want you to think about what family means to the little girl, Lilo, and how this impacts Stitch.
To me this video illustrates the realization that each of us is alone, and as Paz says, this begins the search for communion or the "longing to realize [oneself] in another."
