I am in Paris, helping run a couple of days' consulting training and, thanks to a prompt finish today, managed to make a long-planned pilgrimage to Montparnasse to see the grave of two flawed heroes of mine: Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir.
It must be acknowledged that they were far from perfect human beings - their "unconventional lifestyle" looks pretty seedy to the contemporary eye (Sartre's affair with his adopted daughter is particularly ick) and the support for communist atrocities is hard to stomach. But their contribution to the sum total of human wisdom cannot be denied.
Existentialism, a term which Sartre coined, and they both elaborated, is fundamentally a philosophy of freedom. Humans are unique in the fact that they are free to choose what they do and who they are. But this freedom is not necessarily a gift - choices can be difficult, and freedom can be a huge burden. Sartre went so far as to say "Man is condemned to be free" - and elaborated the many different ways in which we can deny or hide from the reality of our freedom (a process he called "bad faith").
He wrote: “There is no traced-out path to lead man to his salvation; he must constantly invent his own path. But, to invent it, he is free, responsible, without excuse, and every hope lies within him.”
This is a theme that often comes up in coaching: people who feel "stuck" but also are afraid of making the changes to get "unstuck". There are so many reasons not to change: lack of experience, duty to others, fear of the unknown. But not choosing is also a choice, and being aware of that can be the first step on a path to profound change.
Are their choices you are avoiding, and freedoms you are shying away from?
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