Chapter 15: Meaning on Ordinary Days

Sunday Evening, a Year Later

It is nine o'clock on a Sunday evening, and Daniela, whom we met in the first chapter, is ironing shirts again. A year has passed. She still works in the claims department of the insurance office. She still takes the same bus on Monday mornings. She still irons five shirts, one for each working day.

But some things have changed. Six months ago, she started volunteering on Saturday mornings at a centre that helps people fill in difficult forms: applications for housing support, insurance claims, official letters they cannot understand. Her knowledge of claims and rules, which had felt so dull at work, turned out to be exactly what these people needed. She has helped an elderly man get his damaged roof repaired, a young mother understand her rights after a flood and a family who had been wrongly refused support. At the office, she now notices the people behind the files: the person whose kitchen flooded, the family whose car was stolen. She tries to treat each claim as fairly and quickly as she can, because she knows how much it matters to them.

She has also started growing more than tomatoes on her balcony. She has taken up swimming with her sister on Thursday evenings. And she has begun, slowly, to write short pieces about the people she meets at the centre, changing their names, in a notebook she keeps by her bed.

Tonight, as she irons the third shirt, the old question returns: is this it? But this time, it does not frighten her. She thinks: no, this is not "it", as if there were a single answer waiting to be found. This is my life, and I am making it. The shirt is for Wednesday, when she will review a claim from a family whose house was damaged in a storm. She thinks of them, finishes the shirt and hangs it up. She is not certain what her life means. But she knows what she is doing with it, and why.

What We Have Explored

Over the course of this book, we have walked through many ideas from Kierkegaard, Sartre, de Beauvoir and Camus, with some help from Plutarch and Nietzsche. It may help to gather them together.

We began with the Sunday evening question: what is all this for? We saw that the existentialists did not offer a ready-made answer, but a way of living with the question honestly. We saw Sartre's idea that existence comes before essence, that we are not born with an instruction manual but make ourselves through what we do, always within a situation we did not choose. We explored Kierkegaard's image of anxiety as the dizziness of freedom, and Sartre's anguish on the cliff path.

We looked at hard choices between two goods, where no rule decides and our choices create our values. We saw how we hide from our freedom through bad faith, pretending we have no choice. We considered Kierkegaard's thought that life is understood backwards but lived forwards, and Sartre's idea that the meaning of our past depends on what we do now.

We met Camus's absurd: the gap between our longing for meaning and the silence of the world, and his response of revolt, freedom and passion. We watched Sisyphus walk down the hill to his stone, and imagined him content. We explored Sartre's look and the room with no exit, and de Beauvoir's insistence that our freedom is bound up with the freedom of others. We saw how we become who we are, at every age. We followed Camus's doctor, clerk and journalist through a town closed by plague, doing the decent thing. We considered Kierkegaard's two ways of living and the daily renewal of commitment. And we faced the end, with Cineas's question, de Beauvoir's answer and Nietzsche's demon.

Running through all of these ideas is a single thread: meaning is made, not simply found. It is made by free beings, in real situations, through choices, actions and relationships. In this final chapter, I want to draw out four ways in which this making happens on ordinary days.

Meaning Through Projects

The first way is through projects. A project, in the existentialist sense, is any chosen aim that engages us and points toward the future: a craft we are learning, a garden we are growing, a child we are raising, a cause we are serving, a piece of work we are doing well, a skill we are developing. Projects give our days direction. They connect the present to a future we are reaching for.

De Beauvoir, in her reflections on Pyrrhus and Cineas, reminded us that human beings are always reaching forward, and that a life without projects would feel empty. Sartre reminded us that we define ourselves through what we commit ourselves to. And de Beauvoir, in Old Age, suggested that projects reaching beyond ourselves keep us becoming, at every stage of life.

Projects do not need to be grand to give meaning. Daniela's volunteering, her balcony garden, her notebook of stories: none of these will change the world. But each of them gives shape to her days and connects her to something she cares about. Meaning often lives in such modest projects, chosen freely and pursued with care.

It is also worth remembering de Beauvoir's warning about the serious attitude. A project gives meaning when we hold it as our own free choice, open to questioning and in service of human beings. When a project becomes an idol that we serve at any cost, including the cost of other people's freedom or our own wellbeing, it can lose its meaning and even cause harm.

A useful question to ask about any project is whether it makes your life and the lives of others larger or smaller. A project of learning, creating, caring or building usually makes life larger: it opens new possibilities, new skills and new connections. A project of endless accumulation, of winning at others' expense or of proving oneself to people who will never be satisfied often makes life smaller, even when it looks impressive. Choosing projects that enlarge life is one of the simplest ways to make meaning.

Meaning Through People

The second way is through other people. Throughout this book, we have seen that meaning is rarely found alone. De Beauvoir argued that our freedom is bound up with the freedom of others. Camus showed how revolt creates solidarity. Rambert, in The Plague, found that a happiness that left the others behind no longer felt right to him. Kierkegaard's judge argued that committed love can deepen over a lifetime. And Leonor, the hospice nurse in the last chapter, observed that people near the end talk about the people they loved.

Meaning through people takes many forms. It can be found in love: between partners, parents and children, friends. It can be found in care: for the sick, the old, the young, the struggling. It can be found in shared work and shared causes. And it can be found in simple everyday kindness: a word of encouragement, a door held open, a moment of real listening.

The existentialists also reminded us that our relationships can become traps if we depend completely on others' judgments, as in Sartre's No Exit. Meaning through people is not about winning approval. It is about meeting others as free beings, helping them be free and allowing ourselves to be truly seen by those we trust.

For Daniela, the people at the volunteering centre, and the people behind the claims at work, have become a source of meaning she did not expect. Her ordinary skills became valuable when she used them to help others. This is a common discovery: the moment we connect our abilities with someone else's need, our work takes on new meaning.

It is worth adding that meaning through people does not depend on having many people around us. Some of the deepest meaning comes from one or two close relationships, or from a quiet commitment to a single person who needs us. A person who lives alone and writes a weekly letter to an old friend, or who visits one lonely neighbour every Sunday, is making meaning through people just as truly as someone with a large family. What matters is not the number of relationships, but their honesty and care.

Meaning Through Honesty

The third way is through honesty, or what the existentialists often called authenticity. To live authentically is to live as the free being you are: to own your choices, to face your situation clearly, to stop hiding behind roles and excuses and to accept responsibility for what you make of your life.

This kind of honesty does not always feel comfortable. It means admitting when we have chosen badly, recognizing when we are in bad faith and facing difficult truths about ourselves, our relationships and the world. But it also brings a deep kind of freedom. When we stop pretending, we can see our real options, make real choices and live a life that is truly our own.

Camus's lucidity is a form of this honesty: seeing the absurd clearly, without covering it with false hopes, and living fully anyway. Kierkegaard's earnestness is another form: taking one's life seriously as a single individual, not as one more member of a crowd. Sartre's rejection of bad faith and de Beauvoir's acceptance of ambiguity are others. Each of them asks us to look at our lives with open eyes.

Honesty gives meaning because it makes our lives truly ours. A life lived according to other people's expectations, or hidden behind excuses, can feel hollow, even if it looks successful from the outside. A life lived honestly, even with difficulties and mistakes, has a kind of integrity that is itself meaningful.

Honesty also includes honesty about what we do not know. None of the thinkers in this book claimed to have solved the mystery of existence. Kierkegaard believed in God but insisted that faith involves risk and uncertainty. Camus refused to claim a final meaning. Sartre and de Beauvoir changed their minds about many things over their long lives. Living honestly means being willing to say "I do not know" about the deepest questions, while still choosing how to live.

Meaning Through Small Acts

The fourth way, which runs through all the others, is through small acts on ordinary days. The existentialists are often associated with dramatic questions about freedom, death and the absurd. But again and again, their ideas lead back to the details of daily life: how we treat a customer at a desk, how we fold laundry, how we spend a Sunday afternoon, whether we call a lonely neighbour, whether we keep a small promise.

Camus's Rieux did not save the town with a single heroic act. He did his job, day after day. Grand counted cases in the evenings. Margarida, in her apartment block, carried soup up dark stairs. Sisyphus walked down the hill and began again. In each case, meaning was made not in rare moments of greatness, but in the steady repetition of ordinary decency and effort.

This is perhaps the most hopeful message of this book. If meaning is made through small acts, then it is available to everyone, every day. You do not need a grand purpose handed to you from outside. You do not need to wait for a special moment. Each ordinary day offers dozens of small choices through which you can make your life more meaningful: by doing your work well, by being kind, by being honest, by pursuing what you love, by standing with others.

Small acts also accumulate. Over months and years, they shape who we are becoming, as Sartre and de Beauvoir showed. A person who chooses small acts of courage becomes a courageous person. A person who chooses small acts of care becomes a caring person. The meaning of a life is, in large part, the shape made by countless small choices.

There is a particular kind of small act that deserves mention: the act of beginning again. After a mistake, a bad day or a long period of drifting, the simple decision to start again, tomorrow morning, is one of the most meaningful small acts a person can make. Sisyphus began again every time the stone rolled down. Kierkegaard's judge spoke of winning love again each day. Each new beginning is a quiet statement that we are still free, still responsible and still making our lives.

A Meaning That Is Never Finished

One final thought. The meaning we make is never finished, at least not while we are alive. As Kierkegaard saw, we live forwards and understand backwards, and we never find a final resting place from which to see our life whole. As Sartre showed, the meaning of our past changes with what we do next. As de Beauvoir argued, we keep becoming, at every age.

This can feel unsettling. We may want a final answer, a moment when we can say: this is what my life means, and now it is complete. But the existentialists suggest that such a moment would actually be a kind of ending. A meaning that is never finished is a meaning that is still alive, still growing, still open to new chapters.

So if you finish this book without a clear answer to the question "What is my life for?", that is not a failure. It may be the most honest outcome. You are still writing your answer, through how you live. And you will keep writing it, as long as you are here.

You might think of your life as a long letter that you are writing, one line each day. Some lines are beautiful and some are clumsy. Some days you write a great deal, and some days only a word. Nobody can tell you in advance what the letter will say as a whole, and you will not be able to read it complete until the very end, if then. But each line is yours, and each one adds to the meaning of the whole.

When Meaning Feels Far Away

There will be days, weeks or even longer seasons when meaning feels far away. After a loss, during illness, in times of exhaustion or loneliness, the projects, people and small acts that usually give life meaning may seem empty. This is part of being human, and it does not mean you have failed at making meaning.

In such seasons, it may help to keep the smallest possible thread of meaning alive: one small act of care for yourself or someone else each day, one honest conversation, one moment of noticing something beautiful. You do not need to build a grand meaning in these times. You need only to keep going, gently, until the season changes.

It can also help, in such seasons, to let other people carry some of the meaning for a while. A friend who reminds you of what you have done, a family member who sits with you, a community that includes you even when you feel you have nothing to give: these can hold meaning on your behalf until you are able to hold it again. The existentialists emphasized individual freedom, but de Beauvoir and Camus in particular knew that we are never truly alone in making meaning.

It is also important to recognize when a feeling of meaninglessness may be part of depression or another health condition. If you have lost interest in almost everything for a long time, feel hopeless, find it hard to sleep, eat or function, or have thoughts of ending your life, please seek help. Depression is common and treatable. Talk with a doctor or another qualified professional, and if you are in danger, reach out at once to a crisis line or your local emergency services. Reaching out for help is itself a meaningful act: a choice to stay, to keep becoming and to let others stand with you.

Four Lives, a Year Later

Omar, the engineering student from the first chapter who wondered whose life he was living, has spent the year talking with teachers, trying a few different courses and volunteering at a youth club. He has discovered that he still loves mathematics, but that what he enjoys most is explaining it to younger students. He has decided to finish his engineering degree and then train as a teacher. He says that he is no longer living someone else's plan. He is living his own, even if it began from theirs.

Helga, the retired baker from the first chapter, has found that meaning did not end with her bakery. She now bakes bread every Friday for a community kitchen that serves meals to people with little money, and she teaches baking to a group of teenagers on Saturday mornings. She still misses her husband and her old life. But she has discovered that her skill and her care can find new homes. She says that her hands still know what to do, and now they do it for different people.

Tunde, the warehouse worker and father from the first chapter, watched his eldest son leave for university this autumn. He felt the loss deeply. But in the months before, he had started something for himself: a small Sunday football group for men of his age in the neighbourhood, which has become a place of friendship and laughter. He is still devoted to his family. He has also discovered that his own life asks something of him, and that answering it makes him a better father, not a lesser one.

And Daniela, whom we met again at the start of this chapter, is still ironing shirts on Sunday evenings. But she no longer feels that her life is a riddle with a hidden answer. She feels that it is a story she is writing, one ordinary day at a time.

None of these four people found a final answer to the question of meaning. Each of them found ways to make meaning: through projects, through people, through honesty and through small acts on ordinary days. That, in the end, is what this book has been about.

Practical Steps

First, name one project. Choose one chosen aim, however modest, that engages you and points toward the future. Give it regular time.

Second, connect with others. Look for one way to link your abilities with someone else's need, as Daniela did, or to deepen a relationship that matters to you.

Third, practise honesty. Each week, notice one place where you might be hiding behind a role or an excuse, and choose to own your choice instead.

Fourth, value the small acts. At the end of each day, notice one small act through which you made your day a little more meaningful. Let it count.

Fifth, accept that meaning is unfinished. When you feel you do not know what your life means, remember that you are still writing it, and let that be enough for today.

Sixth, protect yourself in hard seasons. When meaning feels far away, keep a small thread alive, and seek help if the darkness lasts or deepens.

A Short Exercise: A Sunday Evening Practice

This final exercise is meant to become a habit. It takes about fifteen minutes, once a week, perhaps on a Sunday evening, when the old question often arrives.

Take your notebook. Turn to the page from the first chapter, "Three things that matter to me", and read it again. Notice whether your three things are still the same, or whether they have changed.

Then write four short headings: "Projects", "People", "Honesty" and "Small acts". Under each, write one sentence about the past week. Under "Projects", write one thing you did toward an aim you care about. Under "People", write one moment of connection or care. Under "Honesty", write one place where you owned a choice or noticed bad faith. Under "Small acts", write one small act through which you made meaning.

Then write one sentence about the coming week: "This week, I will make meaning by..." Keep it simple and possible.

Over months, these weekly pages will form a kind of record of your meaning-making. On days when you feel that your life has no meaning, you can read back through them and see, in your own handwriting, the evidence that you have been making meaning all along, one ordinary week at a time.

Questions People Often Ask

"Which existentialist should I read first?" It depends on your interests. Many people begin with Camus, whose novels and essays are vivid and readable; The Plague and The Myth of Sisyphus are good starting points. Sartre's lecture Existentialism Is a Humanism is short and clear. De Beauvoir's The Ethics of Ambiguity is demanding but rewarding. Kierkegaard is often difficult and playful at once; some readers start with selections from Either/Or or his journals. Good introductions and guides can also help.

"Is existentialism still relevant today?" Many people think so. The questions the existentialists asked, about freedom, choice, meaning, other people and death, have not gone away. In a world of many options, many pressures and much uncertainty, their insistence on owning our choices and making meaning honestly may be more relevant than ever.

"What if I disagree with some of these ideas?" Then you are doing exactly what the existentialists would want: thinking for yourself. They disagreed with each other often. Take what helps you, question what does not and make your own path. That, after all, is the heart of their message.

Chapter Summary and Farewell

Meaning is made, not simply found. On ordinary days, it is made through projects that engage us and point toward the future, through people we love, care for and stand with, through honesty about our freedom and our situation and through countless small acts of decency, effort and care. The meaning we make is never finished while we live; it keeps growing, as we keep becoming.

There will be seasons when meaning feels far away, and in those seasons it helps to keep a small thread alive and, when the darkness is deep, to seek help from others. Daniela, Omar, Helga and Tunde did not find final answers, but each found ways to make meaning in their own lives.

Thank you for reading this book. I hope that, next Sunday evening, when the old question arrives, you will greet it not as a threat but as an invitation. Nobody will hand you the answer. But you are holding the pen. Meaning is made, and you are already making it.