People want to have meaning in each others lives, but ultimately we must come to realize that we cannot depend on others for our validation, and with that realization we finally acknowledge and understand that we are fundamentally alone. The result of this revelation is anxiety in the knowledge that our validation must come from within and not from others.

Irvin Davi Yalom has done an exemplary job at providing an organizational structure for attempting to understand existential theory. He focused on the four main givens of death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness.

Yalom is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Stanford University and the author of several highly acclaimed textbooks, including Existential Psychotherapy and The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy. He is also the author of stories and novels related to psychotherapy, including Love's Executioner, When Nietzsche Wept, Lying on the Couch, Momma and the Meaning of Life, and The Schopenhauer Cure. His latest non-fiction book is Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death.

Because we are alienated and isolated our lives are also meaningless. Nothing exists which is greater than ourselves, therefore there are no external sources of values and absolutes from which we can draw. Taken to an extreme, we might conclude that there is nothing for which to live. However, we also possess the freedom to create our own values and personal life-meaning, and apply them to our condition.

This freedom gives us feelings of significance and purpose that are strong enough to carry us through life. Still, the freedom to choose is another source of anxiety: we must summon the requisite strength and courage to choose our personal life-meaning and hold fast to it. This is undoubtedly a task which many find difficult.

Human beings are also mortal. As we come to grips with the fact that our lives are limited, we develop even more anxiety: we are afraid of death. The knowledge that at some point in the future we will cease to be, while frightening, is at the same time invigorating because it is relevant right now and makes our existence important.

The juxtaposition of life and death is one thing that does give us some certainty. But it also creates tension. And human living is essentially about living with tension and conflict and finding a way to go beyond these, transforming the troubles of the past and the challenges of the present into the possibilities of the future.

Finally, humans are responsible. Being isolated, alone, and free to choose means that one cannot assign blame for his or her problems to someone else. The individual alone makes the choices and therefore is responsible for the outcomes.

At any point we are free to make different choices and thus re-invent ourselves; we are at once the architect, the planner, and the builder of our lives, throughout our lives. Being able to choose is to be constantly in touch with one's potentiality. Often we find this too much of a burden and so we pretend we do not have a choice and are not responsible for what happens in our life and in the world.

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