Existential Living : Living with Open Questions, Freedom, and the Absurd
The Invitation
There are questions many of us carry quietly:
What am I doing with my life?
If I am going to die, what is the point of everything?
Where am I free—and where am I not?
What am I responsible for, even when nothing is guaranteed?
How do I live in a world that often makes no sense?
These are not signs of crisis. They are signs of waking up.
They arise when we notice the basic facts of existence: that we are thrown into circumstances we did not choose, that our time is finite and uncertain, and that no one can live or choose in our place.
Albert Camus called this confrontation the absurd—the tension between our longing for meaning and a world that offers no final answers. His response was neither despair nor false hope, but revolt: a decision to live fully, consciously, and responsibly anyway.
Most of us learn early how to dull this confrontation—to stay busy, follow scripts, borrow certainty, or hand over responsibility to systems and authorities. But the cost is real. We shrink our lives. We mistake comfort for meaning. We drift away from ourselves. We try and control life as much as we can.
This program is for those willing to face life without consolation prizes. To live with eyes open—choosing, responding, and taking responsibility for a life that is unmistakably one’s own.
What We’ll Explore:
Drawing from existential philosophy and psychology—Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Søren Kierkegaard, Viktor Frankl, Irvin Yalom—and myths from various cultures, we’ll examine the core conditions and experiences of being human:
The Givens of Existence
- Thrownness and freedom: the life we did not choose, and the choices we still must make
- Death as the horizon that makes life matter
- Isolation and relationship: living alone-with-others
Inner Existential Experiences
- Existential anxiety, guilt, boredom, and emptiness that come with being alive
- Meaning, meaninglessness, and the courage to live without certainty
Living Honestly
- Responsibility, atonement, and ethical living without moral shortcuts
- Bad faith and borrowed certainty: the ways we hide from ourselves
- The absurd: living fully in a world that offers no ultimate answers
This isn’t theory for theory’s sake. It’s philosophy as lived practice—at the intersection of existential thought, psychotherapy, storytelling, and embodied reflection.
How We’ll Work
This is not a lecture series. We’ll engage the material through:
Reflective exercises that invite personal inquiry
Myth and story from various cultural traditions
Movement, drama, and art to access what thinking alone cannot reach
Group dialogue to explore shared and divergent experiences
Why This Program?
Because we need practices for:
- Sitting with anxiety without rushing to fix it
- Choosing how to live when there are no guarantees
- Facing death, guilt, and responsibility without collapsing into despair
- Finding meaning not as something discovered, but as something lived into
About the Facilitator
Aruna Gopakumar
Psychotherapist | Teaching & Supervising Transactional Analyst (TSTA)
Founder, The School of You & Navgati
This Program Is For You If:
You want to live with greater honesty, depth, and intention.
You are willing to sit with discomfort, rather than rush to answers.
You are curious about what remains when easy explanations fall away.
Investment :
Early Bird Rate : Rs 14,660/- (all inclusive , for first 12 registrations)
Regular Rate : Rs. 18,320/- (all inclusive)
This session is fully booked. Drop your interest below to be the first to know when the next one opens up. In the meantime, explore our other offerings.