It usually hits late at night. Or Sunday afternoon. Or a random Wednesday when you’re doing something mundane.

“What’s the point of any of this?”

Not suicidal ideation (if it is, please reach out for support). More like a sudden awareness that you’ve been running on a hamster wheel without ever asking why. That all the things you’re striving for don’t seem to connect to anything larger.

This is existential anxiety. And strangely, the philosophers who faced it most directly offer something useful.

The Quick Version

Life doesn’t come with built-in meaning. This is terrifying at first, then liberating. You’re responsible for creating your own meaning—and that’s freedom, not burden.

What People Get Wrong

Existentialism sounds like nihilism. “Nothing matters.” A philosophy for depressed French guys chain-smoking in cafés, rejecting everything.

But Sartre, Camus, and company weren’t saying meaning is impossible. They were saying it’s not given. There’s no cosmic blueprint telling you what your life is for. Which means you have to create it.

This is the difference between “nothing matters” and “nothing matters unless we make it matter.” One is despair. The other is radical freedom.

What the Existentialists Actually Said

Sartre: “Existence Precedes Essence”

A hammer has an essence (purpose) before it exists—someone designed it for hammering. Sartre said humans are the opposite: we exist first, then create our essence through choices.

You weren’t born with a predetermined purpose. There’s no “true self” waiting to be discovered. There’s only what you do, what you commit to, what you repeatedly choose.

This sounds lonely. But consider the alternative: being born with a purpose you didn’t choose, living someone else’s script. The absence of predetermined meaning is also the absence of predetermined limitation.

Camus: “The Absurd”

Camus focused on the conflict between humans’ desire for meaning and the universe’s silence on the matter. We ask “why?” and existence doesn’t answer.

His response wasn’t despair. In The Myth of Sisyphus, he uses the image of a man condemned to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity, watching it roll back down, and repeating forever. A pointless task.

Camus’ conclusion: “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Not because the task becomes meaningful, but because Sisyphus can find meaning in the pushing itself—in the struggle, the engagement, the defiance of despair. The rock is his rock. The task is his task.

Frankl: Meaning Through Suffering

Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who survived Nazi concentration camps, observed something strange: some prisoners with “no hope” of survival lived, while others with “reason to live” died.

His conclusion: meaning matters. And meaning can be found even in suffering, through how we face it.

Frankl developed logotherapy—helping people find meaning not by waiting for it to appear, but by recognizing meaning they’ve already been living, or creating meaning through their stance toward unavoidable suffering.

Why It Matters Now

Modern life offers many distractions from the meaning question. You can stay busy enough that it doesn’t come up. But avoiding it doesn’t make it go away—it just makes the 3 AM crisis worse when it arrives.

The existentialist response isn’t comfortable. No one will hand you meaning. No achievement will permanently fill the gap. But there’s something useful here:

If meaning is created rather than found, you’re not waiting for permission to live meaningfully. You’re not hoping for a sign, a calling, a purpose delivered from above.

You’re already creating meaning through every commitment, every relationship, every thing you care enough about to work for. The question isn’t “what is my purpose?” but “what am I giving my energy to?”

How to Practice It

Exercise 1: The Deathbed Question

Imagine yourself at the end of life, looking back. What would you regret not having done, been, or tried?

Not the noble answer you think you should give. The honest answer.

Write it down. This is a clue to what you actually value, underneath the noise of daily obligation.

Exercise 2: Meaning Audit

List five things you spent significant time on this week.

For each, ask: Is this something I’m choosing, or something I’m just doing? Does this connect to anything I care about?

No judgment if the answer is “no” for some items. Just seeing clearly.

The goal isn’t to eliminate obligation but to recognize where you’re living intentionally versus automatically.

Exercise 3: One Meaningful Action

Today, do one small thing that feels meaningful to you—not productive, not impressive, not optimized. Meaningful.

Call someone you care about. Work on a project that matters only to you. Help someone without strategic value.

Meaning isn’t only in grand gestures. It’s in specific, chosen acts.

When This Doesn’t Help

Existential anxiety can overlap with depression. If the meaninglessness feels persistent and heavy—not philosophical questioning but grinding despair—consider talking to a professional.

Philosophy offers frameworks. It doesn’t treat mental illness.

Also: some people find meaning in religious or spiritual frameworks that existentialism brackets. If that works for you, that’s valid. Existentialism is one path, not the only path.

The Strange Comfort

Here’s what I find comforting about existentialism: it takes me seriously.

No cosmic plan means no one’s watching. But it also means my choices matter absolutely—they’re not just following a script. What I care about, what I commit to, what I struggle for: these are mine.

Sartre said we’re “condemned to be free.” The condemnation is real—freedom is heavy, responsibility is uncomfortable.

But it’s also true that no one can tell you your meaning is wrong. You’re not failing at someone else’s test. You’re playing a game where you write the rules.

The anxiety doesn’t fully disappear. Existentialists didn’t promise that. They promised something like: there’s dignity in facing the question directly.

Going Deeper

Read: Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus. Short, accessible, surprisingly hopeful.

Read: Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning. Half memoir of the camps, half logotherapy introduction.

Read: Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café. A readable history of existentialist thinkers and their ideas.

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This is one perspective. Existentialism is a conversation, not a doctrine. Take what’s useful, leave what isn’t.