The art of living boldly: Lessons from existentialist thinkers

Warning: This article contains images some readers may find disturbing or triggering, such as images of concentration camp prisoners.

“At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence.” — Viktor Frankl

Maybe it started with the new year.

A domestic terrorist attack. Wildfires in California. A second Trump presidency. A Nazi salute (well, technically, two) at the Inauguration. Pardons for everyone involved with Jan 6th. A blizzard in the Gulf. Another school shooting. Systematic dismantling of the US government. Four plane crashes (if I’m counting correctly). Flooding. Mudslides. Mass layoffs. And that's not everything. And it's only February.

If you're looking for absurd times, I'm pretty sure we've found them. Although maybe it started with COVID. Existentialists would argue it started well before that.

Absurdity, in the words of Albert Camus, is the essential concept of existentialism.

So then, maybe existentialists could offer us some insight right about now.

What started the existentialist movement?

Although the thinking had been around for quite some time, the existentialist movement came about in the 1940s and ‘50s, with Nazi death camps, WWII, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

If today's circumstances are prompting high levels of anxiety and concern for the future, imagine what it must have been like back then. Between 1933 and 1945, six million Jews were systematically murdered during the Holocaust.

An estimated 80,000 people died when the atomic bomb exploded in Hiroshima, and in the weeks and months that followed, that number doubled from injuries, radiation exposure, and burns sustained by others during the explosion.

Another 40,000 died at Nagasaki in the immediate impact of the atomic bomb dropped there, which again nearly doubled in the weeks and months after from injuries caused to others during the blast.³

WWII was the deadliest conflict in human history. Somewhere around 75 million people died, more than half of them civilians, all from the consequences of war—genocide, fighting, famine, and disease.

It’s hard to imagine the feelings those times must have provoked, with so much death and destruction at our own hands, some of the worst atrocities against humanity seen by a generation, and now we’d harnessed the ability to destroy the entire world with the atomic bomb. It’s easy to see how one might come to view things as meaningless and absurd.

Somehow, though, existentialists were, in fact, still concerned with meaning—they weren’t nihilistic, but they did have to reconcile everything going on at the time. We’re in this crazy world, they figured, now what do we make of it?

So what is existentialism?

When I first learned of existentialism in high school, I got hung up on the first half of the philosophy: the world is meaningless and absurd. It fed right into my teenage angst. Can’t we all just sit around and be depressed by the fact that there’s no point to it all? My teenage mind just wanted to brood. But then came the rest of it:

"Life is what we make it," said existentialist thinker Friedrich Nietzsche.

Yep, as mentioned, existentialists were actually very concerned with meaning. As Albert Camus put it, "The meaning of life is the most urgent of questions."

From an existentialist's perspective, you were thrown into a meaningless world and situation, yes, but then it was on you to make something of it.

So let’s see if we can get the basic concepts down from the existentialists’ point of view:

1—The world is a crazy, meaningless, and absurd place. You’re thrown into it through no choice of your own. But, you’re here, so … deal with it.

2—Dealing with it is how you make meaning of the meaningless. You are free to make a choice, even in the most dire of circumstances and no matter the situation in which you find yourself, no matter who you are, no matter your genetic makeup, no matter your history, etc. (This is a concept called “existence precedes essence” in existentialism. It basically just means that you create yourself, that you’re not stuck with pre-determined roles or circumstances. One of my favorite quotes about this comes from At the Existentialist Café: “as a human being, I have no predefined nature at all. I create that nature through what I choose to do. Of course I may be influenced by my biology, or by aspects of my culture and personal background, but none of this adds up to a complete blueprint for producing me. I am always one step ahead of myself, making myself up as I go along.”)

3—Not making choices (or a choice, in a specific instance) means not taking responsibility for your life. It means playing the victim or shirking responsibility. You have to play your part, even when it’s difficult (especially when it’s difficult).

4—This can be both liberating and overwhelming, but making choices in life will always come with inherent anxiety and uncertainty. It’s just part of being human. Your job is to face those challenges courageously and embrace the opportunity provided to you.

5—That opportunity is to live an authentic life, a life that is true to you and that aligns with your values and beliefs. It’s stepping out and living boldly in a way that only you can live.

Now, if you’re a teenager, this might fill you with anxiety and dread, but for the existentialists, this was quite liberating. It meant complete personal freedom. And for us here in the modern day, it’s where the good news of these absurd times begins. We have the ability to choose, to live freely, to live boldly, and (in the words of Timothy Snyder) to not obey in advance. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

2025 and keeping time

The last few months have been disturbing. So much of what we’re doing seems eerily similar to times preceding WWII—some of the darkest times of human history, and here we are, in 2025, keeping rhythm with it. Racism, transphobia, anti-immigrant sentiment, the spreading of misinformation, the banning of books, attacks on democracy (and, again, that’s not everything).

One of my favorite books that I reference a lot right now is On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder. Some of my highlights:

... the Holocaust began not in the death facilities, but over shooting pits in eastern Europe.

Every large-scale shooting action … involved the regular German police. All in all, regular policemen murdered more Jews than the Einsatzgruppen.

... they had their orders, and they did not want to look weak.

... without the conformists, the great atrocities would have been impossible.

Stand out. Someone has to. It is easy to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom.

It is those who were considered exceptional, eccentric, or even insane in their own time—those who did not change when the world around them did—whom we remember and admire today.

Stand out, rebel, be free

In the words of Albert Camus, “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

Okay, this is where things get difficult for the wannabe rebels among us, and for two reasons:

One, you’ve got the weight of these scary times bearing down on you. What’s going to happen? Will we survive it? How will things change? Times like these make you want to retreat and draw into your own little sanctuary with people you love and trust. The last thing you want to do is stand out.

Side note: Isolation is the last thing we need right now (it’s part of what’s gotten us into this mess). It only makes us more paranoid and distrustful of each other. We need community and to reach outward at least as much as we’re looking inward (which is necessary for the meaning-making part). This is especially true if you’re not in a minority group. If you feel scared, imagine how people in minority groups feel. Having more allies right now would probably be very reassuring. Let it be known that you’re an ally.

Two, choosing, living freely, living boldly—what exactly does that look like? There’s not a playbook for living authentically. By definition, it means being oneself, so … you’re the only one. No one’s ever been you in all of history. So how do you know if you’re getting it right? As you set out to carve your own path, how will you know if you’re succeeding? Won’t it feel weird and new and like you’re doing it wrong, because you’re doing a lot of what no one else is doing? That’s a lot of pressure.

Double pressure. Weight of the big, scary, absurd, meaningless world. Weight of your one life for which you alone can provide its meaning.

You say, Um, no. I’ll hide out, thanks. Existentialists say, Freedom!

And there lies the rub.

In the words of Søren Kierkegaard, “To be free is nothing, but to become free is everything.”

Having all the freedom in the world is nothing if you don't use it, so what does it matter if they take it?

So let’s break this down into things you can do.

And, of course, that's only if you want to. Free country and all.

• You have the choice. You can embrace your freedom and choose who you want to be, what you want your life to represent, and how you’ll live your life. You can either live by your values or be told how to live through other people’s expectations and demands.
• You can take responsibility. This is your life. This is your world as much as it is theirs (the people who are trying to control and dominate it). As it goes in At the Existentialist Café, “make your choices as though you were choosing on behalf of the whole of humanity.” If we’d all live this way (at least the majority of us), we might stand a chance of saving it.
• You can follow your own path and take risks. That doesn’t mean it’ll be easy, but neither is living by other people’s standards and expectations. Is it risky? Sure, but there’s 100% guaranteed risk of dissatisfaction in following a path that’s not yours. Risk comes with everything, even doing nothing (especially doing nothing). When you mess up or something doesn’t work out, just make a new choice. All it means is that you’re living, actually living, instead of avoiding life or missing out on it.
• You can establish your own meaning. The world is a beautiful mess. There's no way around it. I often think of the paradox of it. You could take Louis Armstrong’s song “What a Wonderful World” and make a montage to it of the most beautiful imagery that you think represents the world, and it would be true. You could also take that same song and make a dystopian version, with disturbing imagery, school shootings, war, violence, destruction, famine, many of the things written about here, and it would also be true—disheartening and sadly ironic, but true.⁵ The world is both. It is beautiful, and it is ugly. It has joy, and it has suffering. Inherently. Your life will have both, too. Hopefully the bigger part, the highlight reel when you think back on it, will mostly be beautiful and good. I try to think of anything that will cause me pain in that light, But would I do it again? Was the good worth the bad? And then I try to remember to make enough good to make the bad worthwhile, because if I’m just sitting around watching Netflix everyday, the highlight reel’s not going to look all that great. Making meaning of my life is up to me. It’s up to each of us. What matters to you? How much of that do you include in your life every day? Do more of it. What doesn’t matter to you? Find ways to do less of that, if you can and as you can, so that you can do more of the stuff that matters. (Note that this might involve down-sizing and less stuff in order to free up time or other resources, but what do you care about, the stuff or the thing you’re eliminating the stuff for?)
• You can stand for something. Living boldly means having an opinion, standing for what you believe in, and standing against injustice and oppression. It means standing up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. It means not cowering to bullies (who are usually a whole lot of bluster without a lot of backbone). Don’t let their noise scare or intimidate you. It’s just noise. Stand up to them, and don’t back down. That doesn’t mean violence. It just means you’re not going to be intimidated, and you stand by your convictions.
• You can be courageous. It was Franklin D. Roosevelt who said, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.” When there’s something more important, you won’t let fear stop you. Fear of death shouldn’t stop you from living, fear of the future shouldn’t stop you from living now, and fear of fear shouldn’t stop you from anything—it’s a sign that you’re actually living your life.
• You can be here now, in the words of Ram Dass. These are troubling times, no doubt, and it’s easy to get caught up in catastrophizing what’s to come, but that doesn’t help. We have no idea what’s going to happen. The best we can do is try to learn from history. As Timothy Snyder says, “History does not repeat, but it does instruct.” It pays to pay attention. But that’s not only to the past. Yes, we want to learn from what came before us and hopefully not make the same mistakes, but then we need to get back to the present. If you’re concerned for the future, then the present is the best and only place to effectively influence it. In fact, it was Albert Camus who said, “Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.”
• You can be joyful. When you embrace your freedom and the here and now, when you look for meaning and create it from the meaningless, you will also find joy and fulfillment, and this is the ultimate act of defiance. Here lies an irony, too, as noted by Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, who himself was not an existentialist, but did invent logotherapy, which was a therapy centered around man’s search for meaning (and the title of his book): “Once an individual’s search for a meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives him the capability to cope with suffering.” Once you know how to find meaning in the meaningless, you know how to endure anything.

Where do we go from here?

Who knows. It may not look that good right now, but there are still a lot more of us than there are them, and if enough of us say we’re not going to stand by and watch everything be destroyed, then maybe we have a chance at turning things around. Thirty-six people. We’ve got 8 billion. Just maybe there are enough of us who are willing to live as the existentialists did. Here's hoping.

“We must each decide, for ourselves, what is to be our life.” — Simone de Beauvoir                           

Further reading, watching, & listening

• Book: At the Existentialist Café by Sarah Bakewell
• Book: On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder
• YouTube playlist: On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder
• Book: Be Here Now by Ram Dass
• Book: Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Note: These are not affiliate links.

Footnotes

¹ Image description: Starved prisoners, nearly dead from hunger, pose in Nazi concentration camp in Ebensee, Austria. In the Austrian Alps, the Nazis had one of their largest camps. Large numbers of inmates were starving to death and dying at the rate of 2000 per week. The camp was reputedly used for "scientific" experiments. It was liberated by the 80th Division, 3rd U.S. Army. This item was produced or created in April 1945.

² Image description: Hiroshima after the atomic bomb. This item was produced or created in 1945.

³ Reports differ on the exact totals, but in all cases, it was a lot of people.

⁴ Image description: Seven unidentified Japanese survivors walk down a street in Nagasaki, Japan after the atomic bomb was dropped on August 9, 1945. In the background are rubble and the remains of two buildings. Two of the women in the photograph are carrying children on their backs. This item was produced or created in September 1945.

⁵ And maybe someone's already done this.