¶ … Monologue, a Dialogue with the Self: Reflections on "No Exit" by Sartre
The Self: There is "No Exit" from hell -- not in Christian, theological terms, but by the terms set by Sartre's play of the same name, there is no exit from the self. The varieties of characters that populate the waiting room of hell are condemned for all eternity to examine and reexamine their lives. Socrates may have said that the unexamined life is not worth living, but the over-examined life, when imposed upon the human psyche by reading too much philosophy and self-improvement literature or self-imposed as the result of egocentrism, can be equally eviscerating.
Hell is other people, says the author. Imagine one's self with two individuals one despises, and then one has "No Exit" -- or imagine one's self alone, in a waiting room, locked with the personifications, all of the absurd worries and obsessions of the thoughts collected over a lifetime. That truly would be hell, for even to be locked in a room of hatred beings would at least expose one to the relief of other people's neurotic obsessions.
Descartes said 'I think therefore I am,' locating the human person in the 'I' of thought. But this egocentric I of Western philosophy, created out of ruminative thought, can be a terrible consciousness, a terrible awareness of one's freedom, limits, and ultimately one's mortality. The height of human aspirations in the mind constantly clashes with the limits of human action in the world. One may be dreaming of great achievements, yet find one in a waiting room of a doctor's office for an appointment one does not want, thumbing through a magazine one does not to read -- that is life, that is hell if it is lived in a state of constant presence of mind and awareness of the futility of life and of keeping the body alive -- for what?
The only thing worse is to be in that waiting room alone, alone with one's thoughts -- better to be waiting with a hated 'other' than to be waiting in the prison of the mind, in a state of examination of body, soul, spirit, and cerebral matter.
