Into this void steps an old philosophy with renewed relevance: existentialism. Born from the rubble of war, its thinkers rejected easy comfort and moral certainty. Instead, they asked the hardest question of all: how should we live when nothing guarantees that life has meaning?

Freedom and Its Burden

Jean-Paul Sartre famously declared that “existence precedes essence.” We are not born with a given nature or destiny. We come into the world, and then must decide who we are. In other words, we are radically free.

But this freedom is not a gift—it is a burden. With no divine blueprint or fixed truth, each of us must create meaning for ourselves. Every choice we make is a declaration of values, a shaping of identity. And in a world without foundations, this responsibility can feel overwhelming.

Sartre called this the anguish of freedom: the realisation that, in choosing ourselves, we are also modelling what it means to be human. No one can choose for us. There are no instructions. And yet, we must choose.

This resonates in an age of collapsing narratives. Traditional sources of identity—religion, nation, career—have eroded or become unstable. The freedom to define oneself is now taken as a cultural given, yet few feel equipped for the weight that comes with it.

The Absurd and the Defiant Life

Albert Camus took this further. For him, the modern condition was not just one of freedom, but of absurdity—a mismatch between our search for meaning and the indifferent silence of the universe. We want order, purpose, coherence. The world gives us none.

Camus did not advocate despair. He argued instead for revolt. The absurd must be faced, not denied. Sisyphus, cursed to push his boulder endlessly, becomes a symbol of human dignity—not because he escapes his fate, but because he persists in spite of it. “One must imagine Sisyphus happy,” Camus wrote—not because the task is easy, but because it is chosen.

In this spirit, existentialism offers a path not of comfort, but of engagement. In a culture saturated with escapism—digital distractions, curated selves, manufactured outrage—it insists that we confront reality, act within it, and take responsibility for our existence.

Anxiety and the Self

For Søren Kierkegaard, the father of existentialism, anxiety was not merely a symptom of modern malaise. It was the sign of possibility. Anxiety arises, he argued, when we confront the dizzying openness of life—the knowledge that we can become more than we are, but also that we might fail.

This anxiety is not to be medicated away or repressed. It is the necessary condition for becoming a self. Kierkegaard’s solution was not dogma, but commitment: what he called the “leap of faith.” Not necessarily into religion, but into a life chosen deeply, lived authentically, and embraced with risk.

This is perhaps the most countercultural lesson existentialism has to offer. In a world that demands certainty, safety, and optimisation, it calls us back to vulnerability. To the idea that meaning is forged not in comfort, but in commitment—to a person, a cause, a craft, a belief.

Meaning as Act, Not Answer

Existentialism offers no grand system, no final solution. It is not a cure for anxiety, but a response to it—a way of living honestly within it. It insists that meaning is not something we find lying in wait, but something we make, in how we show up, what we endure, and what we choose.

In anxious times, that message is not only relevant—it is essential. For when the world offers no guarantees, we are called not to retreat, but to act. Not to believe blindly, but to live bravely. In the end, the question is not “What is the meaning of life?” but “What meaning will I make of it?”