Other people...

Have you heard the phrase in common parlance "he or she gave someone hell"?

In his fascinating play, "No Exit", Jean-Paul Sartre puts a startling line on the lips of one of the characters. Three people arrive in hell - a small room. They then realise that each will soon become the source of torture to the other, not by intent or desire, but by mere personality and behaviour. "Hell" says one of the characters, "is other people".

Sartre explains that the statement “hell is other people” has always been misunderstood:
"It has been thought that what I meant by that was that our relations with other people are always poisoned, that they are invariably hellish relations. But what I really mean is something totally different. I mean that if relations with someone else are twisted, vitiated, then that other person can only be hell. Why? because…when we think about ourselves, when we try to know ourselves, … we use the knowledge of us which other people already have. We judge ourselves with the means other people have and have given us for judging ourselves. Into whatever I say about myself someone else’s judgement always enters. Into whatever I feel within myself someone else’s judgement enters. … But that does not at all mean that one cannot have relations with other people. It simply brings out the capital importance of all other people for each one of us. (From the Imago playbill)

Conversely, is it not true, as well, that heaven is other people. As 1 John puts it, the person who loves is born of God and knows God, for God is love.

So both heaven and hell can be - and I certainly do think they are - other people! What a sobering thought.