Enemy or Inner Me: “Hell is other people.”

“Hell is other people.” Jean Paul Sartre

Existentialism has always had a strange pull on the modern soul. It places some heavy responsibility on our hands. It tells us that existence precedes essence, that we are not born with a fixed identity carved into us by fate. We are not defined by labels, by history, by social roles, or by what others decided we are. We become who we are by the choices we make.

And in a world that feels chaotic, absurd even, that idea feels strangely empowering.

If nothing is predetermined, then nothing is imprisoning.

If there is no prewritten essence, then I am not bound to the worst thing I have done. I am not chained to my past. I am not reduced to my mistakes.

There is freedom in that. Radical freedom.

Existentialism insists that I am not a passive object in someone else’s story. I am not merely the product of culture, trauma, religion, or expectation. I am a chooser.

And that is both liberating and terrifying. Because if I am free, then I am responsible.

There is no one left to blame. No system to hide behind. No inherited destiny to excuse my stagnation.

Even in what philosophers like Camus call the “absurd," a world without guaranteed meaning, existentialism dares to say, "Create meaning anyway."

If there is no objective script, write one. If there is no inherent purpose, build one. If the universe is silent, answer yourself. That is why people are drawn to it.

In an age of alienation, anxiety, and disconnection, existentialism speaks directly to the modern condition. It validates the feeling that life can seem chaotic, fragmented, and unstable. But instead of collapsing under that weight, it offers something defiant:

You still choose.

You still define yourself.

You still act.

It is urging us to live by values we have examined, not inherited blindly. It calls us to reject crowd-thinking and live deliberately, even if that path is lonely.

And perhaps most importantly, it builds resilience through responsibility. When I own my choices, even the painful ones, I regain agency. I am no longer merely reacting to life; I am shaping it.

In Jean-Paul Sartre's play No Exit, three strangers find themselves locked together in hell. They expect flames, iron hooks, and medieval torment. Instead, they find furniture. Silence. Each other.

They wait for the torture to begin.

Then they realize it already has.

There are no red-hot pokers. No executioners.

Only the unblinking gaze of the others.

They cannot escape being seen. Judged. Interpreted. Defined.

At one point, the door even opens.

And yet none of them leaves.

Because what traps them is not the room.

It is the gaze.

And in a moment of bitter clarity, Garcin declares:

“Hell is other people.”

Hell is the criticism. The misunderstanding. The betrayal. The way someone can reduce you to a single mistake and hold you there. Hell is the room where you are misread. The meeting where your silence is interpreted as weakness. The relationship where your vulnerability is weaponized. Hell is being seen, and seen incorrectly.

Sartre did not mean people are merely irritating. He meant something far more unsettling. He meant that the gaze of others can imprison us. That being trapped in how someone perceives you can feel inescapable. That the judgment of others can freeze you into a version of yourself you do not recognize. At first, that felt true to me. I believed my struggles were external.

The enemies were outside. The labyrinth was outside. The threat was outside.

I thought life was something I was navigating defensively, moving carefully through corridors of expectation, trying not to be devoured by criticism or rejection.

But something changed, almost imperceptibly. I began to realize that the torment I blamed on others had begun to echo inside me.

Their voices had moved inward. The teacher who once doubted me. The person who dismissed me. The friend who misunderstood me. The authority who overlooked me.

They were no longer present.

But their gaze remained. And that is when Sartre’s line became more complicated.

Hell is not simply other people. Hell is when other people take up residence inside you. Rent-free.

It is when their doubt becomes your self-talk. When their dismissal becomes your ceiling. When their criticism becomes your internal narrator.

The malignance moves. It migrates.

It is no longer the external voice; it is the internal one. Psalm 23 says, “He prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies.”

For years, I imagined that table surrounded by adversaries. People who opposed me. People who wished me ill.

But what if the enemy sitting at that table is not only outside of me?

What if the enemy is the internalized gaze of those who wounded me?

What if the loudest accuser is not in the room but in my mind?

Sometimes I am not fighting people.

I am fighting the version of myself shaped by them.

The child who learned to shrink. The adult who learned to hesitate. The believer who learned to spiritualize fear.

Sartre says hell is other people.

Christianity offers something different.

It suggests that I am not ultimately defined by the gaze of others.

I am defined by the gaze of God.

And there is a profound difference between the two.

The gaze of others can freeze me.

The gaze of God restores me.

One reduces. The other calls forth.

One traps me in my worst moment. The other prepares a table.

So perhaps hell is not other people.

Perhaps hell is forgetting whose gaze matters most.

Perhaps hell is allowing the voices of others to narrate my identity long after they have left the room.

And perhaps the true horror is this:

The enemy I thought was outside has moved inside.

The criticism became cognition. The rejection became a core belief. The misjudgment became a script I replay without realizing.

The labyrinth was never only built by others.

I reinforced it.

Stone by stone.

Belief by belief.

Until the Minotaur at its center sounded suspiciously like me.

This is where responsibility enters.

Not blame. Responsibility.

I cannot control how others see me. But I can confront how deeply I have allowed their gaze to define me.

Sartre was right in one sense.

We are shaped by the presence of others.

But he leaves us suspended in their judgment.

The psalmist offers another possibility:

You can sit at the table anyway.

You can eat in peace anyway.

You can exist under a different gaze.

And perhaps that is the way out of the labyrinth.

Not by denying that others wounded you.

Not by pretending their gaze never mattered.

But by refusing to let it become your inner voice.

Hell is other people, until I internalize them.

Then hell becomes self-betrayal.

And freedom begins the moment I recognize that the loudest enemy in the room may be the echo of someone who is no longer there.

The malignance moved inward.

But so can grace.

And that is the tension I am still learning to live with.

• Whose voice still shapes the way you see yourself, even though they are no longer in the room?

• What belief about yourself did you accept as truth simply because someone else once spoke it?

• Where in your life have you mistaken an old criticism for your own identity?

• What would change if you stopped living under the gaze of others and began living under a different one?

• If the enemy you fear has moved inside, what would it mean to confront it instead of blaming the room?