Now for the fun stuff. I have another quote for you. I actually started keeping a list to try and post interesting quotes or clips at least once a week. I just read the play “No Exit” by Jean-Paul Sartre, even though my better sense — and past experience — told me that I wouldn’t be able to pay attention to a play. I had no hold ups though, partly because “No Exit” is only about 45 pages long, partly because it was flippin’ awesome.

In the play, three strangers find themselves locked in a room which, as they eventually acknowledge, is in hell. In that little story, the characters have to face their past mistakes, survive the “three’s a crowd” situation, and seek salvation.

My favorite quote was from the character Inez. When Garcin says, “A man is what he wills himself to be,” she replies: “It’s what one does, and nothing else, that shows the stuff one’s made of” (pp. 44-45). Garcin then argues that he didn’t have enough time in life to fulfill his purpose. But nobody has control over that (unless they cut their own time short, of course). All that ever really exists is the present, and it is possible that eternal judgment could come at any moment.

Whether we are measured over time or in an instant, it is pleasant to think that our actions compile into a tally, where good deeds are positive and evil deeds are negative. I’d like to think that karma is the one true measure of a person. It seems that Sartre was full of valuable ideas — but his existentialism definitely doesn’t reach far enough to answer all existential problems.