Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.

The line condenses a central Sartrean claim: human beings are always “situated” (shaped by history, class, bodies, other people, and chance), yet they remain responsible for how they respond. Freedom, on this view, is not the absence of constraints but the capacity to take up one’s circumstances through choice—by interpreting them, endorsing or resisting them, and projecting oneself toward future possibilities. The quote also implies an ethical demand: we cannot fully excuse ourselves by pointing to what happened to us, because meaning and action arise from what we make of those givens. It captures Sartre’s tension between facticity (what is done to us) and transcendence (what we do).