Solitude

I would have to say that one of my favorite readings to this day was "The Labyrinth of Solitude" by Octavio Paz.

 He presented some really cool ideas that, while I am sure that I have thought of them before, I didn't know how to put into words.  He is really good about defining things, spelling things out. 

To me he started to answer the question of why we can feel so alone when we are actually surrounded by people who love us.  I say only that he 'started to answer' because while he has some really good ideas I still think that there is more that goes into it.  However, I just loved the points of view that he presented in his book.  His writing style was easy for me to follow and not all flowery and poetical, and while it wasn't exactly a story with characters and a plotline (I usually tend to enjoy those a whole lot more) he did a really good job at keeping the reader interested and wanting to contine reading. 
I didn't necessarily agree with his views on love and marriage, but that is what is great about reading and learning, you can take the things that you really like and put them into your personal book of beliefs and values, while at the same time discarding things you don't agree with. 
     This class has taught me a lot about being able to do that, with the books that we read, the music we listen to and the pictures that we look at.  They can be interpreted many ways and represent different things to different people.  We need to find the things that we like in this life and pull them out and apply them, but we also need to realized that someone else might see it differently than us.  In our discussions I have seen many times where peoples opinions differ, some see a picture as an artists way of denouncing the encroachment of civilization whereas someone else sees it as accpetance of it.  It is to our best advantage to listen to the point of view of others because we might be missing out on something really cool