Jean Paul Sartre in his famous play No Exit writes, “Others Are Hell.”  Who would disagree?  I do care what others think of me.  Still I have no way of knowing what they think.  Therefore I “dance around” trying my best so speak and behave in sync with minds that are opaque to me…  You and I, a dancing marionette, …

Nietzsche had this to say about that.

The art
of associating with people
depends essentially on an aptitude
(requiring long practice)
for accepting and eating a meal
in whose cuisine one has no confidence.

If you come to the table
ravenously hungry,
it is all very easy
(“the worst company can be felt,”
as Mephistopheles says);
but one does not have this ravenous hunger
when one needs it.

How hard it is to digest one’s fellow men!

First principle:
to summon one’s courage as in misfortune,
to fall to boldly, to admire oneself in the process,
to grit one’s teeth on one’s repugnance,
and to swallow one’s nausea.

Second principle:
to “improve” one’s fellow man, by praise,
for example,
so that he begins to sweat out
his delight in himself,
or to grab a comer of his good or “interesting” qualities
and to pull at it
until the whole virtue comes out
and one can hide
one’s fellow man in its folds.

Third principle:
autosuggestion.
To fix one’s eyes upon the
object of association
as if it were a glass button,
until one ceases to feel any
pleasure or displeasure
and goes to sleep unnoticed, grows rigid, and acquires poise

–a home remedy amply tested
in marriage and friendship
and praised as indispensable,
but not yet formulated scientifically.
Its popular name is
–patience.—

–excerpt The Gay Science, Book 5, Section 364 by Friedrich Nietzsche

---

A salute to humanity by “the Boss” Bruce Springsteen, Pink Cadillac.