None Of Us Is Complete On Its Own

None of us is complete on its own. Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf, born Adeline Virginia Alexandra Stephen on 25 January 1882 in London and died on 28 March 1941 in Rodmell (United Kingdom), was an English woman of letters. She is one of the leading modernist writers of the 20th century.

We come into the world alone and we leave alone, between these two moments, our life will only have found its completeness in the encounter with others. Our identity is nourished and built through confrontation with others. This clash of consciences is necessary to reach a state of maturity. Just as it took two people to conceive us, we will always need others to grow. The physical presence of the other is not essential, we can look for it in books or elsewhere, the point is to find a receptacle of consciousness. Even on the path to spiritual realisation, the other is present, no matter whether we meditate in a cave or in an isolated monastery. This other, whether we call him God, universal intelligence or nature, even if we do not see him, our human consciousness needs to conceptualise him in order to create a kind of inner dialogue to help us progress along this path. As such, solitude does not really exist because we always find a way to recreate otherness.
The origin of this search for the other is undoubtedly an emptiness, an inner lack. Although it is a weakness, it is the origin of all the driving forces of human capacities. This handicap is the source of our greatest achievements but also of terrible disasters.

There is nevertheless a state of fullness that can be achieved when we have succeeded in welcoming the other (God for example) into our hearts and minds, it is at this point that we can find peace.