“Only you can let it in. No one else, no one else can speak the words on your lips, drench yourself in words unspoken, live your life with arms wide open. Today is where your book begins, the rest is still unwritten.”

These few lyrics show us that no one else can take the blame. You make your own path and regardless if the path leads you to happiness or disaster, you still made it happen yourself. No one else can take the blame for that. Your life is your doing.

Jean-Paul Sartre tells the story of a pupil of his who was faced with a genuine moral dilemma: whether to stay in France to look after his mother who doted on him; or to set off to join the Free French in England to fight for the liberation of his country. He knew that his mother lived only for him and that every action he performed on her behalf would be sure of helping her to live; in contrast, his attempt to join the Free French would not necessarily be successful and his action might “vanish like water into sand”. He was forced to choose between filial loyalty and the preservation of his country.

Sartre first of all shows the poverty of traditional Christian and Kantian moral doctrines in dealing with such a dilemma. Christian doctrine would tell the youth to act with charity, love his neighbor and be prepared to sacrifice himself for the sake of others. However this gives little help since he still would have to decide whether he owed more love to his mother or to his country. The Kantian ethic advises never to treat others as means to an end. But this gives no satisfactory solution:

“… if I remain with my mother, I shall be regarding her as the end and not as a means: but by the same token I am in danger of treating as means those who are fighting on my behalf; and the converse is also true, that if I go to the aid of the combatants I shall be treating them as the end at the risk of treating my mother as a means.”

To recognize the lack of outside help is to appreciate the meaning of ‘abandonment’: like all of us, Sartre’s pupil is alone, forced to decide for himself. Sartre maintains that even if he were to ask for advice, the choice of advisor would itself be highly significant since he would know in advance the sort of advice different people would be likely to give. The pupil’s experience of responsibility for his own choice is existential ‘anguish’. To act without hope, relying only on what he had control over and accepting that his plans might not come to fruition, is to be in a state of existential ‘despair’.

Sartre’s advice to his pupil was in a way no more useful than the traditional moral doctrines:

“You are free, therefore choose - that is to say invent. No rule of general morality can show you what you ought to do: no signs are vouchsafed in this world.”

Yet, assuming the pupil accepted the advice, it would have made him realize that he was fully responsible for what he made of his life with no hard and fast guidelines to tell him what the right thing to do might be; abstract ethical theories are ultimately of little use when it comes to solving actual moral problems in one’s life.

Existentialism is the philosophical study of the human experience as it relates to free will, and seeks to discover the purpose and meaning of life. Many philosophers have written about existentialism, and there are scores of ideas that vary in detail, but the fundamentals remain the same. It is understood that human existence is impacted by our free will; as humans, we are able to willfully determine the nature of our life's experience based on our unique responsibilities and decisions.

Existentialism evolved primarily in Europe during the 1940s and 1950s, as society struggled with finding meaning in a post-World War I universe. At this time Jean-Paul Sartre popularized the concept, though interestingly it isn't typically his philosophical writing that people recall.

Though Sartre popularized the philosophy, it is actually the 19th-century philosopher Soren Kierkegaard who is credited with helping shape its foundation. Kierkegaard coined the term "the single individual" and brought to light questions that would later be considered existentialist about the individual's ability to make decisions and find meaning in life.

Writers latched on to the idea of existentialism. Franz Kafka was one of the most notable authors to embrace the philosophy in absurdist texts like "The Metamorphosis" in which a man turns into a giant insect, and "The Trial" in which a man is arrested, though it remains unknown for what crime, and despite his best efforts, he cannot find the people who are prosecuting him.

In existentialism, existence is both freedom and despair. In a world without apparent meaning or direction, the individual is radically free to act. Most individuals are afraid to confront the responsibility entailed by radical freedom. Death looms as a boundary situation, defining the limits of existence. The recognition of such limits and the responsibility for one's actions lead to an existential despair that can overwhelm the individual.

However, Sartre and religious existentialists consider despair a painful but necessary stop on the road to freedom. Since existence is prior to essence, the existential individual at every moment confronts the nothingness of existence.

Religious existentialism also begins with individual anguish and despair. Men and women are radically alone, adrift in a world without apparent meaning. Religious existentialists, however, confront meaning through faith. Since existentialism is concerned with the individual and concrete experience, religious faith must be subjective and deep. Faith is less a function of religious observance than of inner transformation. But, as Kierkegaard elucidated, because of the enormous distance between the profane and the sacred, existential religious faith can never be complacent or confident. For existential men and women, whether religious or secular, life is a difficult process of becoming, of choosing to make themselves under the sign of their own demise. Life is lived on the edge.