Is hell other people? By Charlotte GENEIX

 

Get a life!

First, let’s define “hell”. It is the place you go to after you die (if you have not been accepted into heaven that is!), right? But, hell is also something you can live in or live through, here and now. It is when you think life isn’t worth it anymore because your relationship to others has become so awful.

Now, let’s define “other people.” It means people that are different or distinct from myself, and often people that I don’t know, i.e. the potentially dangerous ones… For me, that’s you, staring at me. And I am the “other” for you. So, following the Sartrian aphorism, you are my hell, and I am yours…

You probably know a guy who, when he was a kid, was a little plump and way too spoilt by his parents. He was bullied by the other kids, who didn’t really realize how much they were hurting him. He grew up totally lacking self-confidence. Today, he has suicidal tendencies…

Less dramatic: what about people who are just shy? Their shyness is part of their personality; they can’t really do anything about it. Some people do manage to control it; think of Beyoncé or Obama. Most of us are at least a little apprehensive when meeting new people. Maybe you don’t talk at all and just stare at them, waiting for them to make the opening gambit, or maybe you talk too much? However you behave, it shows that we usually care a lot about the way other people consider us. Maybe we worry too much about it? We tend to try to live up to what we think other people’s expectations of us are and not, in the end, live for ourselves.

Sometimes, “other people” are people we have never met, or are unlikely to meet, and who make our lives hell. People like Hitler who made so many people’s lives hell. Or your boss who decides to fire you for a reason you do not comprehend.

Sometimes, the people who hurt us the most are the ones we love the most. Like Alexandra Lange, who was beaten by her husband and who killed him because, she said: “It was him or me.” It was, she thought, the only way to get out of the hell he had made of her life. But, murdering her violent husband did not make her less unhappy, it just threw her into another nightmare. According to Sartre, “we do not judge the people we love.” We trust them, we open our hearts to them, but, in doing so, we become vulnerable; it becomes easy for them to destroy us if they want to…

Is there anybody in this room who has never been hurt in some way by someone else? It may have been by your best friend, or your boyfriend or girlfriend, or even your parents. Because you value them more than anyone else, when the people you love hurt you, it really hurts. But, are you not guilty too of having done harm to someone you cherish?

Sartre wrote: “Everything comes to us from others. To be is to belong to someone.” We are stuck with each other because, alone, our life loses its meaning. But, shared with someone else, it often becomes a living hell. The divorce rates tend to prove this; did you know that in France, the majority of married couples now separate (click here!)?

So, I think we can say that, yes, hell can indeed be caused by other people. However, I think we ourselves as individuals are the main cause of our lack of personal well-being. We create our own hell because we always want to be “better” than others: we are vain, wanting to leave our mark on this world, or power-hungry, wanting to control those around us.

Anyway, before blaming other people for your rotten existence, remember that, as Sartre once said: “We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are.” So, if your friends are fiendish, it’s your fault for not making up your mind and letting them choose you as their friend…

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