Other People

“Hell is other people”. We’ve all heard this phrase at some point or another. It’s become increasingly popular on t-shirts, tote bags, and stickers—serving as portable, and palatable douses of cynicism to carry throughout our days. While it’s not considered acceptable to roll your eyes at your coworker or elbow the person who cut in line, what you can say is “Hey, I like your sticker! Hell really is other people, isn’t it?!” and chuckle to yourself knowing exactly who you are referring to. If there is one thing humans are good at, it’s disliking each other together. So, it’s no surprise that this quote has such strong sticking power. It wasn’t until recently that I discovered that this quote comes from the play “No Exit” by Jean-Paul Sartre. As clever as it sounds on a t-shirt, the depth of its original intention sheds light on why we might gravitate toward it in the first place.

The play involves three characters who find themselves in Hell. They are all initially shocked by two things: the fact that they, of all people, ended up there, and the lack of implements of torture. The characters spend a few heated hours forcing each other to admit the terrible things that they had done in life. Each character is shamed by their peers into facing the honest and ugly truth about who they had been during their time on earth. They fight, and point fingers, and compete for pity, until the noise dies down and one character exclaims that they are clearly meant to be each other’s torturers. Thus, in this case, Hell is other people—not physical punishment or the fire and brimstone that so often comes to mind. Of course, there is a lot to unpack there—but stay with me a moment. What I would like to do today is take this insight and spin it in a more hopeful and practical direction.

I was most struck by the impact of this play when I shifted my focus from Satre’s fictional Hell to the world around me. I asked myself, “In what way are other people a mirror for ourselves and, further, how can that mirror help soften our gaze toward others?”. I encourage you to join me in considering this question not from a place of shame, but of observation. What can our frustration with others teach us about ourselves? Is the unfavorable way that someone is interacting with us a reflection of something we need to address internally? Or, what does our empathy toward others show us? What can we learn about ourselves from observing what pulls on our heartstrings? This is not to say that our feelings toward others are strictly “our fault”. There is righteous anger, and there is appropriate sadness. Sometimes people treat us in ways that only they can possibly explain. But that aside, we are skilled projectors. We often look to the outside world and say, “Look, I told you! Hell must be other people—just look how they treat me!”. But you see, it does not have to be. Hell can be other people, if you refuse to see your reflection in their eyes.