In the middle of the ocean, a castaway refills his flask with seawater, and drinks it in abundance. Not only is your body becoming contaminated, but with every drink your thirst increases. It is an extreme situation, a bitter end to a wasted life. A desperate mirage that condemns those who believe in its beauty. No matter how much the castaway drinks the sea water, his thirst is not quenched, it is not calmed.

The metaphor is powerful, and the person who wrote it down was the philosopher of pessimism, Schopenhauer. Because although this philosopher always tended to see the darkest part of the human being, with his negative thinking he found great truthslike the one he exposes in this powerful metaphor.

sea ​​water

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For the metaphor to be complete, the simile must be established. «Wealth and money are like sea water. The more we drink, the thirstier we become,» Schopenhauer said. And the philosopher of pessimism had discovered a dark truth. Just like the desperate castaway fills his flask with salt water, man desires, longs and believes he needs wealth to be happy.. Unfortunately, when he pours the drink down his throat, he discovers that all this abundance, far from satisfying him, creates a greater gap in his satisfaction.

What Schopenhauer presents to us is a painful reflection of accepting. Human beings want something, we get it and, almost immediately, a new desire arises. It is an endless cycle that never brings peace or calm. Just more thirst.

Schopenhauer was born in 1788, but a look at the present would prove him right. We live immersed in unbridled consumerism, surrounded by advertising messages that remind us of what “we lack” to be happy. Every new object we acquire gives us an ephemeral high, a false sensation that our thirst will finally be quenched.. But inside it only eats away at our insides, slowly leading us to that metaphorical death of the castaway. The existential void.

When having replaces being

The philosopher’s warning should worry us. If we feel minimally reflected in that castaway who seeks wealth to quench his thirst for happiness, we are condemned to die of thirst. We are condemned to feel empty. And this happens because, in modern society, we have replaced “being” with “having.”

The greatness of a person is no longer measured in their attitude, in their kindness, in their human quality.. Now value is measured by likes, luxury watches, trips, image, wealth, money, ostentation. The superficial.

Philosophical reflection crosses barriers and even has the support of experts in the field of psychology and economics. Psychologist Arun Mansukhani explains that, Although money is essential in our society to gain a certain state of well-being and security, it never buys happiness.. Money gives us time, not joy. It is what we do with that time that can help us be happy.

The study of this topic reaches such depth that we even have an exact measure of economic happiness. Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, They established in 2010 that the limit that can help a human being be happy is $75,000 a year.. From this figure onwards, people become distrustful, ambition eats away at our social relationships, and having more money, far from making us happy, makes us unhappy.

The road to freedom

In a world where everyone talks about financial freedom, Schopenhauer would ask us to think first about our personal freedom. His metaphor, as powerful as it is painful, invites us to think that perhaps in this life it is not so important to have everything, but to be yourself.

For this we must give up excessive desirethere is no other option. And for that, we need to cultivate critical thinking.

Our desire, after all, is not free of connection with the context. If we want a smarter phone, a faster car or a bigger house it is because we are continually exposed to advertising (explicit and implicit) that invites us to desire these elements that grant status in our society. After all, The human being continues to be a social animal and tied to his impulses.

Become aware of what operates at an unconscious level in our mind, questioning our own desires is the only way to achieve personal freedom. Developing critical thinking and self-awareness then become not forms of ego dominance, but the only emergency exit available in the burning building that is our society.