In his 1944 play 'No Exit' Jean-Paul Stare famously wrote 'L'enfer,
c'est les autres', commonly translated into English as 'Hell, is other
people'.
However, far from being ‘hell’, it strikes me that other people are
oftentimes, ‘heaven’.
In the saddest moments of your life it is ‘other people’ who usually
chase away your gloom. When you’ve been down on your knees for a long time it
is generally other people who come along and set you back on your feet. It is
other people who will show you that things are worthwhile, even when you
haven’t been able to see any purpose in anything for as long as you can
remember. Perhaps Satre should have written ‘Hell is some, but not necessarily
all, other people’.
I was heading into middle age before I really understood that the shape
of our lives is dependent upon other people. Far from being masters of own
destiny we aren’t even the back seat navigators. It is other people and how
they behave, how they think, what they choose to do and when they choose to do
it that really molds our lives, for good and for bad.
I can pinpoint four or five periods in my life when socially,
professionally, intellectually and spiritually everything seemed to be in
place. During those very happy periods of my life things seemed to be rational,
fun, exciting and interesting. Life brimmed with possibility. Much of this
happiness was down to my own efforts at building a positive existence for
myself; but the actual framework for that happiness was constructed upon the
behaviour and attitudes of the other people with whom I was working, living,
socialising and thinking.
There is no doubt that ‘other people’ can be a drag upon your hopes and
ambitions, but equally ‘other people’ can be the pathway to you achieving a
sense of worth and happiness that is far beyond what you ever thought
possible.
I suspect and hope that on my last day, when I realise that
my time is almost up, I will spend my final moments being thankful for, ‘other
people'.
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