What is the meaning of Sartre's statement that "man is condemned to be free"?

In the most fundamental of ways, Sartre's statement indicates
that the only element that exists with human beings is the ability to possess freedom. This
creates a situation of agonizing choice because human beings cannot look to another
transcendental force to escape the pain of freedom and choice. For Sartre, the critical element
that defines human consciousness is the ability to choose. Sartre's brand of existentialism is
trademarked with the idea that "existence precedes essence," which is a way of suggesting that
human beings enter the world without any force other than freedom to guide them. There is no
transcendence, no higher power, no overarching point that eliminates the condition of agonizing
freedom that defines human beings and their place in the world. In the Sartrean conception of
freedom, one can only think of the student that Sartre teaches who is "condemned to be free."
This student has a difficult choice, to say the least. Either he stays with his sick and dying
mother, while his nation is overrun by the Nazis, or he joins the resistance to save his country,
but his mother will die alone. In this condition, the student is poised between equally
desirable, but ultimately incompatible courses of action. For Sartre, this is the epitome of the
pain of choice. It is this very being that allows him to say that "man is condemned to be
free."