The happiness and the freedom They usually appear among the great ideals of human experience. Although they are often analyzed separately, different thinkers have pointed out that both maintain a close relationship and that it is difficult to achieve a full life without considering both dimensions.
In this framework, the Spanish academic Jesús G. Maestro, professor of literature, left a reflection that invites us to rethink the priorities of today’s society: «The problem of our time is that we talk about happiness and forget freedom.»
With this phrase, the teacher focuses on two concepts that are usually presented as complementary. His approach suggests that the search for happiness can remain incomplete if it is not accompanied by the ability to choose, act and develop one’s own life with autonomy.
Although there is no single definition of happiness, disciplines such as philosophy and psychology agree on associating it both with everyday well-being and with deeper aspects, such as a sense of purpose, personal fulfillment and the development of one’s own abilities. From that perspective, Maestro’s reflection opens the debate on how much value is given today to freedom as a necessary condition to build a satisfactory life.
Jesús González Maestro explained that his reflection seeks to question some of the ideas that, according to him, society has accepted almost without discussion. Among them, he mentions the belief that work alone leads to freedom, the association between consumption and self-esteem, or the idea that «likes» on social networks can function as an antidote to loneliness.
The Spanish writer and professor is known for his provocative tone and his critical look at contemporary culture. His works are usually aimed at readers who distrust simple answers and are willing to confront uncomfortable questions. In this sense, he maintains that today’s society educates people to adapt to certain models of behavior, but not necessarily to think autonomously or fully exercise their freedom.
In an interview with RAC1, the most listened to station in Catalonia, during the podcast The formula for success, González Maestro delved into this idea and warned that, with the passage of time, the search for happiness was displacing freedom as one of the great values of modern life.
«The problem of our time is that we talk about happiness and forget freedom,» he said. With that phrase, the academic summarized one of the main theses of his thinking: the need to recover the value of individual freedom as an indispensable condition for building an authentic and fully conscious life.
For the professor, one of the great problems of contemporary society is that freedom was losing prominence in the public debate and was relegated compared to other concepts, such as happiness. According to him, It is a word that is increasingly less present in everyday speech.despite the importance it has for people’s lives.
In this sense, he points out that freedom usually appears associated with slogans or expressions from other times, while happiness became for years one of the values most promoted by current culture. «The buzzword until very recently was happiness,» he said.
For González Maestro, this trend can be problematic because reality rarely completely matches expectations. Many people build projects, desires and objectives that can be sustained for a time, but that do not always come to fruition. When happiness depends exclusively on achieving those goals, any frustration can lead to a quick feeling of disappointment or discomfort.
For this reason, the academic considers it necessary to recover the value of freedom as an essential condition for personal development. In his opinion, the lack of freedom limits the ability to choose and conditions the way in which people build their well-being. From this perspective, achieving a full life is difficult if there is no real possibility of deciding on one’s own destiny.
For González Maestro, freedom is neither an abstract idea nor an unattainable ideal. It is, above all, the effective capacity to choose and act according to one’s own convictions, an element that is considered essential to aspire to genuine and lasting happiness.
