Sartre’s famous aphorism that “hell is other people” is backwards.

Hell is disconnected self-consciousness. Hell is the lack of other people.

A characteristically brilliant and frank recent post by Mona brought this to mind:

My biggest test for the last couple of years, though, has been feeling (relatively) alone in my quest for human interdependence. It pulls me back into my ego and pain like nothing else can…

Anything would be better than that certain disturbing air of nonchalance.

If you’re willing to be real at all, and even the least bit vulnerable, seeking your right approach to the challenges in life, that is beautiful. No need to pour out your heart and soul. But why do people need to pretend that they have everything in life figured out? How is that a good reason to keep everyone else at a distance?

Isn’t it odd how we’ve developed this instinct of creating hell for ourselves by pushing people away from our imperfections?

Someone once suggested to me that the most deeply personal experiences that we have—the ones we’re sure no one else could possibly understand—are the most universal. The tragedy is that we rarely find out, because we are so hesitant to share them.

Society, others’ expectations, and social roles, the popular scapegoats, are not to blame for this nervous nonchalance. We are.

Hell is the blind self-consciousness we trap ourselves in by worrying about imaginary judgment from others.

Yes, it’s dangerous to be honest. People might find us out: find out our imperfections, our failures, our mistakes; might find out that we are human, and—what? laugh at us? leave us?

Or people might understand us, so much that they can’t help loving us.