When I was in college in the late 70’s, I happened to read a play by Jean Paul Sartre called No Exit. It struck me then and has stuck with me since. Sartre was an existentialist philosopher concerned with theories of being and nothingness. “To be or not to be” was Hamlet’s question as he wrestled with his situation in Denmark immobilized by indecision; Virginia Woolf wrote about “moments of being” as her way of separating wheat from chaff, the extraordinary from the ordinary, in life. As an English major, I pondered such literary dilemmas looking for enlightenment.

Sartre’s play envisions the conditions of an afterlife. Three previously unacquainted people are locked in a room with one another for eternity. There are no windows. There are no mirrors. There is no means of privacy. Sense of self as well as personal peace of mind is impossible in the presence of these others; in stark contrast to a sense of self that may be developed or conjured when one is forced into a solitary confinement. The only way to “see” themselves is as a reflection of what the others “see” in them.

This situation becomes torturous and maddening for these characters.  It is Hell. The resounding revelation is:

“Hell is other people.”

No Exit is set in afterlife, but in real life, at times, I have experienced a similar feeling of hellish entrapment with other people. I may feel isolated sometimes or lonely often but I am not alone. I depend on others and others depend on me.  What happens to me good or bad affects others. Relationships ebb and flow, priorities change with loss and age, and feelings don’t last.

To maintain this slow simmer of middle age is more of a challenge than I ever imagined it would be. I did not ever anticipate how much time in my life I would spend waiting. I sleep erratically which means I dream less. I seem to keep having to start over even though it is unlikely I will move from this place. I am fastened in by responsibility. I am burdened by debt and lack a room of my own.

How I got here is sometimes just as puzzling to me as where I am supposed to be going from here.

Time passing and passing the time is a kind of mindless busy work that is measured in increments but is really just the same grains of sand recycling as the hourglass is turned upward one day and downward the next. It is rote and routine activity; so much depends on others causing my hourglass to twist and turn. And there is the occasional clog when things come to a virtual standstill until proper attention is paid to fix the problem.

Getting what you want is not about setting up to catch for the win. It is all about the purposeful means of moving the sands of time forward each day that truly matters in the end. The loose ends you leave behind unravel and fall away or become the ongoing concern of someone else.

Days on Earth are spent navigating nature’s random placement of stepping-stones to cross a stream from one safe foothold to the next. It’s a rare skill to be able recognize the unexpected perfect landing that may happen between a rock and hard place. It’s an art to manage to stay put there, maintaining a nesting place is the routine battle.

At the edge—out on a limb—anyone can make a required leap. Staying put, remaining constant and committed is the ongoing struggle in real life. It’s not the plummet or the climb; you sweat those out under pressure; it’s the plodding along and the endless waiting that truly tests your resolve.

Is this being or nothingness I feel? Who am I? Am I really as important to others as I think I am? Do I know them? Do they know me? Are we really in this together?

Teri Garr may have captured the back and forth dilemma of selfliness and otherliness best in the movie Tootsie when her character, Sandy, utters some infamous lines to Dustin Hoffman after their platonic friendship becomes complicated by an impromptu one-night stand:

“I never said I love you, I don’t care about I love you! I read “The Second Sex,” I read “The Cinderella Complex,” I’m responsible for my own orgasms, I don’t care! I just don’t like to be lied to!”

In this film, Dustin Hoffman’s character, Michael Dorsey, deceives others by changing his appearance and acting as a convincing woman even though he is hiding the fact he is actually a man.

This entertaining movie cleverly explores the theme of gender stereotypes in our society but it has a lot to say about all our relationships with others. It challenges us to think about how others “see” us and don’t “see” us and how much the roles we choose to play define us or cloak us. It also suggests that mere disguise does not change underlying truth.

Dustin Hoffman makes the point famously:

“I was a better man with you, as a woman… than I ever was with a woman, as a man.” 

How often we struggle to be true to ourselves and yet not to be at odds with others in doing so.

How we relate with others becomes the very fabric of our lives.  Family. Friendship. Love. Identity. Commitment. Shared Values and Beliefs. What is too much? What is not enough? Always questions. Thoughts unspoken. Loose ends. Stones unturned. No absolute certainty. Only shades of gray.

And yet how do we ever really understand the viewpoint of another person?

In the 8th grade, I first read Anne Frank’s lingering words of hopefulness recorded in a diary she kept while imprisoned with others in an attic hiding from the Nazis–she leaves a message of hopefulness:

“Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.” 

In the same class, we also read Harper Lee’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird  in which Scout shares her father’s viewpoint on judging others:

“Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them.” 

These are important influences for me in dealing with others.

But so often, I find myself thinking of John Donne’s poem, which explains kinship to others in a few brilliant and beautiful lines:

“No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

So, I consciously resist the comfort of my own island and keep trying my best to relate to others, to listen, to reach out, to be approachable, to stay involved in mankind.

But, I often feel thwarted and occasionally get shattered.

Eventually, people will disappoint you. Even people who most of the time love you, care for you, or delight you. And the slight or hurt will occur at the worst possible moment for coping more often than not. 

Disappointment can come as the result of a minor lapse on the part of another like missing an appointment or arriving too late to provide some support that was needed; these incidents would be lumped in the forgiven but not forgotten category. A major betrayal of good faith or trust by another person tends to result in the bitterest form of disappointment with another; a jet plane deliberately crashing into the World Trade Center; impossible to forget and forgiveness, always possible, takes time and work.  

Not that it lessens the blow when it happens to you, but hurtfulness tends to be reciprocal in nature. And it repeats itself with pure and simple randomness. Or in other words, what goes round, comes round, as the saying goes.

Decisions and choices you make usually have impacts and consequences for others; some that are factored and some that are unintended; just as decisions and choices made by others with some relationship to you or even by complete strangers not associated with you may lead to unexpected impacts and consequences in your life.

Deliberate disregard or insensitivity is difficult to accept as fact and find a way to move on without any baggage; forgiveness of a wrong is more possible when you can see some sense of right in another’s wrong and come to believe as Jesus said:

“They know not what they do.”

So, there is also that Golden Rule that Jesus teaches to consider: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you,” along with its companion verse:“Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

The idea is: Thinking of others will make us behave better than thinking only of ourselves.

The lesson is: This way of thinking is not instinctive. And it is not the advice we are given to improve or get ahead in life.

How do you achieve?

Look out for #1. Put yourself first. “To thine own self be true,” does not come from the Bible, it comes from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. To be more virtuous, must we be less ambitious?

Thinking of others is not the way we are taught to win.

In the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey tells us how to Think Win-Win:

“To go for win-win, you not only have to be empathetic, but you also have to be confident. You not only have to be considerate and sensitive, you also have to be brave.”

Covey admits it’s a difficult balance.

I Win-You Lose is much easier and considered a fair adult game. Everybody plays, everybody wins is just child’s play. Every success does not necessarily require someone else’s failure, but in a power struggle or polarizing disagreement, there is often the need for compromise, concession, or surrender.

And the question becomes: Is my position here more important to hold onto than the others? Is this a hill I want to die on?

You Win-I Lose is really just giving up, it’s caving…isn’t it? Or could it be a reasonable solution if you consider other people basically good at heart, take the time to stand in their shoes, and come off your island when you hear the bell toll.

Putting the needs of others before your own is not instinctive. It is learned behavior. The cause must be worthy of subservience.

Self-sacrifice for others is viewed as heroic as when Mr. Spock explains to Admiral Kirk his decision to sacrifice his life to save the Enterprise in The Wrath of Khan; he tells us logic dictates that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs…of the few…or the one.” 

When you make a sacrifice for others, you want it to have meaning. When the meaning is lost, discounted in some way, or goes unnoticed into oblivion, there is that disappointment.

But, for you, it will remain a moment of being.

Every experience you live through, every other person you chance to know is with you every day and ever after part of your wake. A moment from the past can be pinpointed within every choice you make, the baggage carried along going this way and the debris left behind going that way. No one independent why or why not ever makes or breaks you. I think it is how you put together the positives and negatives you have collected that gives direction and meaning to the path you take to move forward.

How are we judged?

There is a film called Defending Your Life that was written and directed by comedian Albert Brooks.  It envisions the conditions of afterlife.  After living their life, people are detained in waiting to determine whether they will move on to a next destination or return to Earth to try living over again. To decide their ultimate fate, they must face a prosecution with counsel before a panel of judges to defend their life on Earth. During these trials, key moments from their lives are projected for review.  What is projected to them for review is not the stuff listed on resumes or remembered in obituaries but they are presented with key moments of being. The surprise twist its that it is not about the big picture; it is about little details. In Brooks’ afterlife model, the defense of your life rests on how you handled yourself when faced with fear in your life. Did you take proper action or were you immobilized by it? His message for living life on Earth to its fullest is: “Fight fear.”

Of all the concepts of afterlife I have been exposed to, I may like this one the best. I have thought about what moments my review reel might contain.  Looking back on things I have done and not done, I wonder if I would do the same if I had to defend my life on Earth based on the choice I made at the time. Unlike looking through a scrapbook or watching the old home movies that capture achievements and events, I think of little incidents in life where my character comes shining through, when I stand up for what I believe to be right, when I see something happening that no one else does, when I speak up if I believe something is wrong. The idea of this film is definitely an influence. I do try to fight fear and attempt to be brave though I don’t throw caution to the wind. I do consider and recognize how fear can be a factor involved when trying to understand the actions or inaction of others.

There is a quote about fear by Eleanor Roosevelt that crosses my mind right now because I think it is related:

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

If I am honest, I can tell you that my greatest fear is losing others. Particularly loved ones. But also others who have some meaning in my life. I have difficulty letting go of people for a reason. Just as John Donne wrote that “every man’s death diminishes me,” I have this sense that as people who knew me pass away, they take from this world with them a sense of me that they knew. And somehow I am not the same person anymore, diminished in some way without their light shining on me.

When grieving, people assure you that you will carry your lost loved one with you by keeping their memory alive. I understand and agree with this sentiment but at the same time, I feel that it is also true that part of me has died along with the loved one. And maybe that hollow hole is where the memories should go. But the longer you live, the more people you lose. And maybe at some point you become a hollow soul more filled in with thoughts of others than yourself.

I think it is why the most commonly held vision of an afterlife involves seeing your loved ones again and being with them for all eternity. We all live our lives here and then get to go to Heaven together. It is a more hopeful and a pleasant experience to imagine eternity in the company of those who you loved and who loved you on Earth rather than spending eternity in a room with complete strangers upon whom you depend to reflect back to you who you are as Sartre showed us in No Exit.

There is one more depiction of an afterlife that I want to include here. I have not read the book that it is based on but I happened to watch the film called Five People You Meet in Heaven starring Jon Voight and Ellen Burstyn. I bought this film on DVD for my mother on her birthday but the DVD would not play in her machine so I brought it home to test it on mine and when I pushed play and it worked fine on my player.

I ended up being captivated by the story and watched it from beginning to the end even though I had not planned to. In this story, we learn that there are in your life there are people and places that define your life and you will meet these people and return to these places in Heaven. Each person you will meet in this version of Heaven has a played an important role in shaping your life on Earth though it may have seemed unimportant at the time or you may have missed the significance of this person when you crossed paths or their act altogether when it occurred. And your presence in their life was pivotal in some way as well. The intricacy of the connections and the twists of fate made me think back on my own life.

Have I met one of my five people yet? Am I already someone’s person?

The concept of afterlife presented in this film is a fascinating premise that delivers a powerful message about how other people can touch our lives in simple yet significant ways that will matter to us most in the end.

So, I try to pay attention to the moment, offer assistance to others whenever I can and notice the kindness of others wherever I encounter it.