In existentialism, anguish is in all people. Everyone is either in a state or anguish or is hiding/trying to get away from their anguish. People always have anguish because in any moment, when a decision is made by any person anywhere, it in turn can and will have an effect on the things around them. This forces a sense of responsibility alongside a sense of anxiety. The only way to prove to yourself that not everyone feels anguish is to deceive yourself into thinking that not everyone has this sort of feeling. There is no way to fully understand your own purpose and your own reason for living. There is no way to fully understand if your purpose in life is to impose your ideas onto the world (like say being a president) or to sell mass produced burgers in a fast food chain. It is something we have no way to know, and thus feel despair in being unable to understand these complexities.
We further live in despair when trying to cope with the idea that we as humans do not have complete and total freedom in our lives. We cannot control everything around us. And for most the best way to hide this feeling is by just ignoring it. However that does not deny that the fact that that despair and anguish is still there.
Sartre presents an example of marriage. With marriage, without marriage, and with marriage and kids, you take some form of immense responsibility. Partially your own responsibility for your own actions and more for when you have a wife and possibly kids to look after.
A similar example to Sartre’s marriage example is when I was a paid instructor for the drumline at a local Middle School. Even though I had 2 coworkers to help me work through all of the tasks of running the drumline and keeping everything orderly, I still felt that the responsibilities were upon my shoulders. My coworkers failures alongside the drumlines failures were failures of my own. I felt as though there would have been some way for me to prevent those errors.
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