Hell Is Not Other People. It Is You
Aristophanes liked to slip knives under laughter.
In The Frogs he sends Dionysus into the underworld to judge a poetry contest.
Hades turns into a stage.
The dead turn into actors.
Comedy becomes an x-ray.
He understood something long before psychology gave it a label.
Hell is not flames.
Modern life is not far off.
You put on a face for work.
Another for family.
A third for any room where you would rather not be noticed.
Every mask is a small concession.
Every concession files something off the bone.
The world applauds the well-trained.
The ones who smile on cue, shift tone, read the temperature.
Adaptable. Polished.
But the price is always the same: one more step away from the person you meant to be.
People quote Sartre like a bumper sticker.
Hell is other people.
It sounds simple. Too simple.
Sartre meant something sharper. He was talking about the way we let others define us, not the people themselves.
But most readers take it literally, as if the problem were the crowd outside and not the performance inside.
The older I get, the less that shortcut makes sense.
Hell is the self you invented to make life easier.
Hell is the mask that fused to your skin.
Hell is realizing the costume outlived the actor.
That is why Aristophanes still hits a nerve.
Hell is the greatest theatre in the world.
The dead are trapped in the roles they rehearsed.
Repetition as punishment.
No improvisation.
Only the script they once agreed to follow.
That is the danger. Play a role long enough and the exits disappear.
You forget how to walk offstage.
There is only one escape: authenticity.
Not a virtue. Not a lifestyle.
A survival tactic.
To be authentic is to tear up the script.
To speak in your own grain.
To say no when the room expects a yes.
To stand in your unpolished shape and let the chips fall where they may.
Authenticity is not heaven.
It is the fire escape.
It is the door that leads outside the recycled air of other people’s expectations.
It feels dangerous because it is.
Masks are safer than faces.
But only faces are alive.
Aristophanes mocked poets.
He did not know he was sketching our century.
A civilization of actors.
A world of small stages.
People drifting so far into their roles they forget the name on their own birth certificate.
The truth is quiet and merciless.
The more you pretend, the more the pretender takes command.
The more you perform, the more the performance becomes the cell.
Hell is not other people.
Hell is being locked inside the version of yourself you once invented.
Authenticity is the last way out.
It is the only way to stay human in a world eager to assign you a part you would never choose freely.