I think it's safe to say that everyone's 2020 has been at best a little wild, and at worst pretty nightmarish. It's easy to get caught up in all the awful and tragic events of this year and get overwhelmed by fear, sadness, anger, or other negative emotions. In many cases, it seems like these emotions may only justify the pessimistic worldviews of some famous philosophers you've heard about; Hobbes calling human life 'nasty, brutish, and short', Nietzsche famously dubs humanity the 'murderers of all murderers', and that's not even mentioning all the more existentially dreadful philosophers.

While those quotes above aren't exactly as disempowering as you'd think in context, the connotation is certainly very negative and can be off-putting to those who'd wish to learn philosophy in order to understand happiness and how to better the human condition. Since the last thing anyone needs in 2020 is more anxiety and dread, I decided to check out some of the more positive ideas of the philosophical world and see what came up.

The biggest and most interesting philosopher that, if not exactly happy, brings me feelings of calmness and empowerment, has to be Jean-Paul Sartre and his idea of radical freedom. A very short summation of radical freedom would be that all people everywhere are free to do whatever they wish in order to maintain goodness for themselves and for all; no one is bound by their patterns or prior intentions, it is solely what you wish to do to better your life and those lives around you that is your choice.

While this may seem a little odd at first, it's actually pretty helpful if you want to grow as an individual or are feeling hopelessly disempowered. It may be true that a lot of your - and everyone else's - life is dramatically affected by institutions beyond our sphere of influence, it is equally true that you are within your own influence, and can choose to pursue what makes you happy today without the bounds of who you were yesterday.

Of course, you are still bound to be a good and moral person, so Sartre isn't giving you a free pass to kill your neighbor or rob a bank, but you can decide that you want to go outside more often or spend some free time drawing, or even give a hug to a friend. You are radically free in your ability to become happy and to help others do the same; within yourself, you can choose to be a better person than you were yesterday, and make the world a better place by doing so.

I think we all need that sort of empowerment and reassurance in 2020, so I earnestly hope this idea can provide that, in some marginal way, to you.