Meaning Is Made

Sartre and Camus for Ordinary Days

Introduction: The Question That Will Not Go Away

Sooner or later, most people ask it. Sometimes it comes quietly, on a Sunday evening before another working week. Sometimes it comes suddenly, after a loss, an illness, a birthday that ends in a zero or a morning when the alarm rings and getting up seems pointless. Sometimes it comes in the middle of a perfectly good life, when everything is fine and yet something is missing. The question is simple, and it is enormous: what is all this for?

For much of human history, many people received an answer to this question from outside themselves: from religion, from tradition, from their family, their village or their place in society. Many people still do, and find great comfort and wisdom there. But many others, in every part of the world, find that the old answers no longer speak to them, or that they speak only partly. They are left with the question, and with the uncomfortable feeling that nobody is going to hand them the answer.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a group of thinkers took this uncomfortable feeling seriously. Instead of hurrying past it, they looked straight at it. Their ideas came to be known as existentialism. Its best-known figures include Søren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus, though they disagreed with each other about many things, and Camus did not accept the label for himself. What they shared was a conviction that each person stands in the middle of their own life, free and responsible, and that meaning is not something we find lying on the road, but something we make.

That idea can sound frightening at first. If meaning is not given, does that mean nothing matters? This book argues the opposite. When meaning is made rather than found, it becomes something we can take part in, every day, in ordinary ways: in the work we do, the people we care for, the honesty with which we face our lives and the small acts of decency that nobody may ever notice. These thinkers did not offer comfort in the usual sense. But they offered something sturdier: a way to live fully, with open eyes, without waiting for permission.

How to Use This Book

Each chapter begins with an ordinary moment in someone's life, then explains one existentialist idea in plain words, naming the book in which it appears. It then shows the idea at work in different kinds of lives and ends with practical steps, a short exercise, answers to questions that readers often ask and a brief summary. You can read the chapters in order, since the ideas build on each other, or begin wherever your own question is sharpest today.

I have retold the ideas of these thinkers in my own words. For the nineteenth-century writers, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, and for the ancient writer Plutarch, I sometimes give a short passage in my own plain translation. For the twentieth-century writers, I describe their ideas and name their works rather than quoting them, so that you can read their own words for yourself if you wish. Their books are widely available, and they are worth reading.

The people in the examples are imagined. Their names and lives are invented, but their questions are common ones, shared by young and old in many places. You may find yourself in some of them.

The exercises are meant to be done, not just read. Most of them need only a pen, a notebook and some honest attention. Philosophy, for these thinkers, was not a set of opinions to collect. It was a way of living, tested in the details of real days.

One more thing matters very much. This book explores questions about meaning, freedom and death. For most readers, these questions are thought-provoking rather than dangerous. But if you are going through a time when life feels unbearable, or if you have thoughts of ending your life, please do not carry this alone. Contact a crisis helpline, a doctor or someone you trust right away, and if you are in immediate danger, call your local emergency number. Asking for help is not a weakness. It is one of the most meaningful choices a person can make.

Now, let us begin with that Sunday evening question, and with the strange, freeing idea that you were not born with an instruction manual.

Chapter 1: The Sunday Evening Question

Ironing Shirts at Nine O'Clock

Daniela is thirty-four and works in the claims department of a large insurance office. It is nine o'clock on a Sunday evening, and she is ironing five shirts, one for each working day of the week ahead. The television is on in the background, but she is not watching it. She is thinking about Monday.

On Monday, she will take the same bus, sit at the same desk and open the same programme on her computer. She will read descriptions of damaged cars, flooded kitchens and broken windows, check them against the rules and decide how much money each person should receive. She is good at her job. Her manager values her. She earns enough to pay her rent and save a little. She has friends, a sister she loves and a small balcony where she grows tomatoes in summer. Nothing is wrong.

And yet, as she irons the third shirt, a question rises in her that she has felt before but never quite allowed herself to hear. Is this it? Is this what my life is for? She imagines doing the same thing for thirty more years, ironing five shirts every Sunday evening, and she feels something between sadness and fear. It is not that her life is bad. It is that she does not know what it means.

She switches off the iron and sits down on the sofa. The question does not go away. She thinks of people she knows who seem certain about the meaning of their lives: a friend who is devoted to her faith, a cousin who has given everything to his small business, a neighbour who lives for his grandchildren. She envies them a little. Nobody ever told Daniela what her life was for. And she is beginning to suspect that nobody ever will.

A Question as Old as Humanity

Daniela's Sunday evening question is one of the oldest questions human beings have asked. In every culture and every age that we know of, people have wondered why they are here, what they should do with their lives and what happens when those lives end. The ancient poems, scriptures and philosophies of the world are full of this wondering.

For much of history, many people received answers from outside themselves. Religions told them what their lives were for and how to live them. Traditions gave them a place in a family, a village or a society, with roles and duties already defined. A farmer's child would become a farmer; a carpenter's child would learn carpentry. Meaning was, in a sense, handed down like a tool or a house.

These answers have given comfort, strength and wisdom to countless people, and they still do. Many readers of this book will hold religious or traditional beliefs that give their lives meaning, and nothing in these pages is meant to take that away. But many other people, in many places, find that the old answers do not fully speak to them. Perhaps they have moved far from where they grew up. Perhaps they have lost the faith they had as children. Perhaps they believe, but still feel that the question of how to live their own particular life is left open.

For these people, and for anyone who has ever sat on a sofa on a Sunday evening wondering what it is all for, there is a family of ideas that may be helpful. It does not offer a ready-made answer. Instead, it offers a way of living with the question honestly, and of making an answer through the way we live.

It is also worth noticing that the question often arrives at moments of change. When a routine breaks, when a role ends, when we move to a new place or lose someone, the structure that held our days together loosens, and the question appears in the gap. It can also arrive in moments of success, when we finally reach something we worked for and discover that it does not feel the way we expected. In both cases, the question is not a sign that something is wrong with us. It is a sign that we have noticed something true about our situation.

Four Thinkers and Their Times

The ideas we call existentialism were developed by many writers, but four of them will be our main companions in this book. They lived at different times, wrote in different styles and disagreed about many things. But each of them faced the question of meaning directly.

The first is Søren Kierkegaard, who lived from 1813 to 1855. He was a philosopher, a religious thinker and a writer of extraordinary energy, who published many books in his short life, often under invented names. Kierkegaard was a devout Christian, but he was deeply critical of comfortable, conventional religion. He insisted that each person must face the question of how to live as a single individual, not as one more member of a crowd. Many later thinkers saw him as the father of existentialism, although the word did not exist in his time.

The second and third are Jean-Paul Sartre, who lived from 1905 to 1980, and Simone de Beauvoir, who lived from 1908 to 1986. They were philosophers, novelists and playwrights, and lifelong companions, who read and criticized each other's work for over fifty years. In the years during and after the Second World War, their ideas about freedom and responsibility became widely known, and the word "existentialism" became attached to them. Sartre wrote about freedom, choice and the ways we deceive ourselves. De Beauvoir wrote about freedom too, and about how our freedom is bound up with the freedom of others, and about how we become who we are.

The fourth is Albert Camus, who lived from 1913 to 1960, when he died in a car accident. He was a novelist, essayist and journalist. He is often grouped with Sartre and de Beauvoir, and for a time they were friends, but Camus rejected the label "existentialist" for himself, and the friendship ended in a famous public disagreement. Camus wrote about what he called the absurd: the clash between our deep wish for meaning and a world that does not answer. His response was not despair, but a fierce love of life.

Because these four thinkers were so different, it is better to think of existentialism as a conversation than as a single doctrine. In this book, I will try to show where they agreed, where they disagreed and how each of them can help us on ordinary days. I will also, now and then, bring in other voices, such as the nineteenth-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and the ancient writer Plutarch, where they add something useful.

What They Shared

Despite their differences, these thinkers shared several important ideas, which will appear again and again in this book.

The first is that the starting point of philosophy is the individual human being, living a real life, in a real situation. Not humanity in general, not abstract theories about the universe, but you, here, now, with your particular body, history, relationships and choices. This is why their ideas often feel so personal. They are not about life in general. They are about your life.

The second is freedom. Each of these thinkers believed that human beings are free in a deep sense. We are not simply objects pushed around by causes, like stones rolling down a hill. We can choose how to respond to our situations, what to make of our pasts and what to do with our futures. This freedom is not unlimited. We are born into bodies, families, places and times we did not choose. But within those limits, and often beyond what we expect, we are free to choose.

The third is responsibility. If we are free, then we are responsible for what we make of our lives. We cannot simply blame our parents, our society, our nature or our luck for everything. This can feel like a heavy burden, and these thinkers did not pretend otherwise. But it also means that our lives are truly ours.

The fourth is the feeling that comes with freedom: anxiety, unease, sometimes dread. When we realize that nobody will make our choices for us, that no rule book tells us exactly how to live, we may feel dizzy. These thinkers did not treat this feeling as a sickness to be cured, but as a sign that we are facing the truth of our situation.

These thinkers also shared a style of thinking. They often wrote not only treatises but also novels, plays, diaries and essays, because they believed that philosophy should be tested in the details of real lives. A character in a novel who struggles with a choice can show what freedom feels like more vividly than a page of argument. This is one reason why their ideas still reach so many readers: they are close to the texture of ordinary experience.

And the fifth is that meaning is something we make, not something we simply find. This is the idea at the heart of this book, and it deserves a section of its own.

Meaning Is Made, Not Found

What does it mean to say that meaning is made? For the atheist existentialists, such as Sartre, de Beauvoir and Camus, it meant something quite radical: that the universe itself has no built-in purpose for human life. There is no cosmic plan in which each of us has a role written in advance. We are here, and it is up to us what our being here will mean.

Kierkegaard, as a religious thinker, saw things differently. He believed in God. But he also insisted that faith is not a comfortable answer passed down by society. It is a personal, passionate choice that each individual must make without guarantees, in fear and trembling, to borrow the old biblical phrase he used as the title of his 1843 book Fear and Trembling. Even for him, then, meaning was not simply handed over. It had to be lived and chosen.

For all of them, the idea that meaning is made does not lead to the conclusion that nothing matters. This is a common misunderstanding. If meaning is not found ready-made, some people think, then life is meaningless and every choice is as good as any other. The existentialists argued the opposite. Precisely because meaning is not given, our choices and actions matter enormously. They are what create meaning. A life of honesty, love, courage and work is meaningful not because a rule book says so, but because a person has made it so, by living it.

Think of it this way. A blank page has no story on it. That does not mean that stories are impossible. It means that the story is yet to be written, and that the person holding the pen is the one who will write it. The existentialists saw human life as something like that blank page, though never quite blank, since we always start in a particular place, with particular materials. What we write is up to us.

This can feel frightening, but it can also feel freeing. Daniela, on her sofa, feels that nobody has told her what her life is for. The existentialists would say: of course not. Nobody could. Your life is not a riddle with a hidden answer that someone else knows. It is a work in progress, and you are its author.

Not a Rejection of Other Answers

It is worth being clear about one thing. Existentialism, as it is presented in this book, is not an attack on religion or tradition. Some existentialists, such as Sartre, de Beauvoir and Camus, did not believe in God, and they wrote about what that means for human life. Others, such as Kierkegaard, were deeply religious. Many people today combine religious faith with ideas drawn from existentialism, and find that the emphasis on personal choice, honesty and responsibility deepens rather than threatens their faith.

What existentialism does challenge is the idea that anyone can simply receive meaning without taking part in it. Whether you believe in God, follow a tradition or hold no beliefs at all, the existentialists would ask you: is this meaning truly yours? Have you chosen it, with open eyes? Or are you simply going along with what others told you, because it is easier than asking?

This question can be uncomfortable for everyone, believers and non-believers alike. But it can also lead to a richer, more personal relationship with whatever gives our lives meaning. A tradition that has been questioned and then chosen is often held more deeply than one that was simply inherited.

There is one more thing these thinkers would add. Even people who hold firm beliefs must still decide, every day, how to live them. A person who believes that kindness is important must still choose, in each situation, what kindness requires. A person who belongs to a tradition must still decide which of its teachings to emphasize, how to apply them and what to do when they seem to conflict. In this sense, every person, believer or not, is making meaning through their choices, all the time.

Four Sunday Evenings

Omar is nineteen and in his first year at university, studying engineering because his parents and teachers said he was good at mathematics. On Sunday evenings, as he prepares for the week, he feels a strange emptiness. He is doing well in his courses, but he does not know whether he wants to be an engineer, or what he wants at all. Everyone around him seems to have a plan. Omar's question is not yet "What is life for?" but "Whose life am I living?" It is the first step on the same road.

Helga is seventy-seven. For forty years, she ran a small bakery with her husband, getting up at four in the morning, kneading dough and serving customers. Now the bakery is sold, her husband has died and her days are open. On Sunday evenings, which used to be the time to prepare for the week's baking, she sits in her kitchen with nothing to prepare. She has never asked what her life was for, because it was always full. Now, for the first time, the question has room to appear, and it frightens her a little. She wonders whether meaning was only ever in the bakery.

Tunde is forty-five and works night shifts in a large warehouse to support his wife and three children. On Sunday evenings, before his first shift of the week, he plays football with his sons in the park. He rarely asks what his life is for. When he does, the answer seems obvious: it is for them. But lately, his eldest son has started talking about leaving home for university, and Tunde has begun to wonder what will remain when the children are grown. He loves his family deeply. He is beginning to sense that his own life also asks something of him, apart from his role as a father.

Daniela, Omar, Helga and Tunde are at very different points in life. One is young and unsure, one is old and newly free, one is in the middle of busy responsibility and one is in a comfortable routine. But each of them has met, in their own way, the question that the existentialists took so seriously. And none of them can simply be told the answer.

What This Book Will Not Do

Before we go further, I want to be honest about the limits of this book.

It will not tell you what the meaning of your life is. Nobody can do that, and the thinkers we will explore would have been suspicious of anyone who claimed to. What this book offers is a set of ideas, questions and practices that can help you think more clearly about your own life and make choices that feel more truly yours.

It will not make all your uncertainty disappear. The existentialists believed that some uncertainty is simply part of being human, and that trying to escape it completely leads to self-deception. The aim is not to eliminate the question of meaning, but to live with it more honestly and more fully.

Questions about meaning can also arise in times of loss, depression or crisis, and in those times, the right support from people who care about you and from qualified professionals matters most. If you are struggling seriously, please reach out to someone. And if life ever starts to feel not worth living, do not wait: speak to a doctor, call a helpline in your area, or, if you are in danger, contact your local emergency services.

What this book can do, I hope, is keep you company with your question, offer you the thoughts of some remarkable people who faced the same question and give you some practical ways to make meaning in your ordinary days.

Practical Steps

First, let the question be asked. If you have a question like Daniela's, do not push it away. Give it some time. Sit with it, write it down, talk about it with someone you trust. The question itself is not a problem. It is a sign that you are taking your life seriously.

Second, notice where your meanings come from. Think about the things that give your life meaning now, or that you have been told should give it meaning. Where did they come from: your family, your culture, your religion, your friends, your own experience? Which ones have you truly chosen?

Third, separate "nothing is given" from "nothing matters". If you feel frightened by the idea that meaning is not handed to us, remind yourself that this does not mean nothing matters. It means that what you do matters a great deal, because it is what creates meaning.

Fourth, start a notebook. Choose a small notebook to keep while you read this book. Use it for the exercises and for any thoughts that arise. Writing helps make vague feelings clear.

Fifth, read slowly. Take each chapter as an invitation to look at your own life, not just as information to absorb. You might read one chapter a week and spend the week noticing how its ideas show up in your days.

Sixth, be gentle with yourself. Questions of meaning can stir up strong feelings. You do not need to answer them all at once. Meaning is made slowly, over a lifetime.

A Short Exercise: Three Things That Matter

This exercise takes about twenty minutes. It is a simple way to begin noticing what already gives your life meaning, before we explore how meaning can be made.

Take a page in your notebook. At the top, write: "Three things that matter to me." Then, without thinking too hard, write down three things that matter to you in your life right now. They might be people, activities, values, places, hopes or anything else. Do not worry about whether they are important enough or the right kind of thing. Write what comes.

Under each one, write a few sentences answering two questions. First: why does this matter to me? Try to go beyond the first answer. If you wrote "my children", for example, you might ask what it is about caring for them that feels meaningful. Second: did I choose this, or was it given to me? Some things may have been given, such as a family, and then chosen again and again through how you live. Others may have been chosen freely. Some may have been given and never really examined.

Now look at your three things together. Is there anything they share? Perhaps they all involve other people, or creativity, or helping, or learning. This shared quality may point to something important about how you make meaning.

Finally, write one sentence at the bottom of the page: "One small thing I could do this week that would honour one of these three things." It might be calling a friend, spending an hour on a hobby, telling someone you love them or simply noticing, during an ordinary task, why it matters. Then do it.

Keep this page. Later chapters will ask you to return to it, and you may find that your three things change as you read. That is part of the process. Meaning is not fixed. It grows with us.

Questions People Often Ask

"Is existentialism a gloomy philosophy?" It is often described that way, partly because its writers looked honestly at difficult things: anxiety, death, absurdity, loneliness. But many readers find it the opposite of gloomy. Camus, in particular, wrote with great love of life, sunshine, the sea and human friendship. Sartre and de Beauvoir wrote about freedom as something exhilarating as well as demanding. The existentialists asked hard questions in order to live more fully, not in order to despair.

"Do I need to read their original books to understand this one?" No. This book is written to be understood on its own. But if any idea particularly interests you, reading the original works can be rewarding. Some, such as Camus's essays and novels and Sartre's lecture on existentialism, are quite readable. Others, such as Sartre's longer philosophical works, are very difficult, and you may prefer to approach them through guides and introductions.

"What if I already know what my life is for?" Then you are fortunate, and this book may still be useful. The existentialists would invite you to look again at your answer, not to throw it away, but to make sure it is truly yours and to see how you live it each day. Even people with a clear sense of purpose face hard choices, moments of doubt and questions about how to live well. These chapters may help with those too.

Chapter Summary

The question "What is all this for?" is one of the oldest human questions. Many people have received answers from religion and tradition, and many still do. But many others find that the old answers do not fully speak to them, or that the question of how to live their own particular life remains open.

Existentialism is a conversation among thinkers, especially Kierkegaard, Sartre, de Beauvoir and Camus, who took this question seriously. Camus rejected the label, and they disagreed about much. But they shared a focus on the individual's real life, on freedom, responsibility and the anxiety that comes with them, and on the idea that meaning is made rather than simply found. This does not mean that nothing matters; it means that our choices matter a great deal.

In the next chapter, we look at the idea that lies at the centre of Sartre's thought: that human beings exist first and define themselves afterwards, without an instruction manual.