Happiness is imperfect, built on embracing absence and pain
En un tiempo que promete la felicidad como producto alcanzable, el psicoanalista Gabriel Rolón propone una inversión radical: no se trata de conquistar el bienestar, sino de aprender a habitarlo con todas sus grietas. Desde Buenos Aires, Rolón argumenta que el dolor deja marcas más duraderas que la alegría, y que aceptar las ausencias —no negarlas— es la única vía hacia una vida que verdaderamente nos pertenezca. Su neologismo 'faltacidad' nombra esa felicidad imperfecta que no huye de las heridas, sino que las sostiene.
- La cultura contemporánea vende la felicidad como un destino optimizable, y Rolón llega a desmontar esa promesa con una afirmación incómoda: el dolor es más fuerte que la alegría.
- El mito de las soluciones mágicas —apps, hábitos, fórmulas— genera una ansiedad colectiva que aleja a las personas del único momento en que la felicidad puede existir: el presente.
- Rolón acuña 'faltacidad' para nombrar lo que la cultura no se atreve a llamar felicidad: un estado que abraza las carencias, las ausencias y las heridas en lugar de suprimirlas.
- En el amor, identifica una trampa simétrica: quien ama entrega poder sobre sí mismo, y solo una renuncia voluntaria a usar ese poder distingue el amor que sana del que daña.
- El obstáculo más profundo, advierte, es anterior a cualquier elección: nacemos atravesados por mandatos ajenos que nos vuelven extraños a nuestros propios deseos, y el regreso a uno mismo es un trabajo lento y sin atajos.
Gabriel Rolón, psicoanalista de referencia en el pensamiento emocional contemporáneo argentino, se propone desarticular una de las grandes ficciones de la cultura actual: que la felicidad es un estado que puede alcanzarse, perfeccionarse y sostenerse con las decisiones correctas y suficiente voluntad.
Su punto de partida es perturbador: el dolor es más fuerte que la felicidad. La alegría se desvanece; la memoria de lo ausente permanece. Esta asimetría, dice, debería cambiar el modo en que pensamos el objetivo mismo. La cultura cae en la trampa de buscar soluciones mágicas —atajos, prácticas, fórmulas— cuando el verdadero bienestar exige algo más difícil: un trabajo consciente y continuo, y la disposición a aceptar que ese trabajo nunca termina del todo.
Para nombrar lo que sí es posible, Rolón acuña un término: 'faltacidad'. Construido sobre la palabra 'falta', designa una felicidad capaz de abrazar las carencias, las ausencias, el dolor y las heridas —no de negarlos ni trascenderlos, sino de sostenerlos. No es resignación, aclara. Es una forma distinta de fortaleza.
Esa felicidad imperfecta solo puede habitarse en el presente. No en la memoria, que distorsiona y duele, ni en el futuro, que nos arranca del único momento que realmente ocupamos. Buscarlo en otro tiempo —en un pasado idealizado o en un logro por venir— es vaciar de sentido la existencia actual.
En el amor, Rolón ve la invención más ingeniosa de la humanidad para engañar brevemente a la muerte, y también el lugar de mayor vulnerabilidad. Amar es entregar poder sobre uno mismo. Un amor sano es aquel en que el otro, teniendo ese poder, elige voluntariamente no ejercerlo, incluso en el conflicto. Esa renuncia es lo que distingue el amor que cura del que lastima.
El obstáculo más hondo, sin embargo, antecede a cualquier elección adulta. Desde el nacimiento, internalizamos tantas voces y mandatos ajenos que terminamos siendo extraños a nosotros mismos. Reconocer esa distancia es el primer paso de un regreso que no es rápido ni indoloro, pero que Rolón señala como el único camino honesto hacia una vida que se sienta propia.
Gabriel Rolón, a psychoanalyst whose work has shaped contemporary thinking about emotional life in Argentina, sat down recently to dismantle what he sees as one of the great lies of modern culture: that happiness is something you can achieve, optimize, and sustain through the right choices and enough willpower. The conversation ranged across the mythology of wellbeing, the weight of inherited expectations, and what it actually means to live well in a time that demands immediate results and perfect outcomes.
Rolón's central claim is unsettling. Pain, he argues, is stronger than happiness. A moment of joy fades; the memory of what is absent lingers. This asymmetry matters because it shapes how we should think about the goal itself. The culture around us, he observes, falls into a trap of seeking magical solutions—quick fixes, life hacks, the right app or practice that will finally deliver contentment. But real wellbeing requires something harder: conscious, deliberate work, and a willingness to accept that the work never fully ends. "Being happy carries a very large responsibility," he said, and part of that responsibility is stripping the word itself of impossible expectations.
To describe what is actually achievable, Rolón has coined a term: "faltacidad." It is a neologism built from the Spanish word for lack or absence, and it names a state that most people would not immediately recognize as happiness at all. Faltacidad is a happiness capable of embracing all the lacks, the absences, the pain, the wounds. It does not deny them or transcend them. It holds them. "There is no happiness," he explained. "There is faltacidad—a happiness that is capable of embracing all my lacks, my absences, my pain and my wounds." This is not resignation. It is a different kind of strength.
Where, then, does this imperfect happiness live? Rolón is precise: in the eternal present. Not in memory, which distorts and aches. Not in the future, which is uncertain and pulls us away from the only moment we actually inhabit. The present is where happiness must be built, moment by moment. To seek it elsewhere—to believe that contentment waits in some past golden age or some future achievement—is to hollow out the meaning of existence right now. This requires a kind of courage that is not often named as such.
Love, in Rolón's framework, is humanity's most ingenious invention for briefly deceiving death. It is also the place where we become most vulnerable. To love someone is to give them power over you—the power to wound, to diminish, to win an argument by striking at what matters most. A healthy love, he argues, is one where the other person voluntarily renounces that power. They have it; they simply choose not to use it, even in anger or conflict. This restraint, this refusal to weaponize intimacy, is what distinguishes love that heals from love that harms.
But there is another obstacle to finding what we actually want, and it begins before we are old enough to choose. From birth, we are crossed through by the opinions and mandates of family and society. We internalize so many voices that we become strangers to ourselves. "We are so traversed by other people's opinions that we end up eccentric to ourselves," Rolón observed. The path to genuine desire—to knowing what we actually want rather than what we have been told to want—requires first recognizing how far we have drifted from our own center. Only then can the work of return begin. It is not quick. It is not painless. But it is, Rolón suggests, the only honest path to a life that feels like it belongs to us.
Citações Notáveis
Being happy carries a very large responsibility, and part of that is stripping the word of impossible expectations.— Gabriel Rolón
Love is humanity's invention to briefly deceive death, and a healthy love is one where the other person voluntarily renounces the power they have to hurt you.— Gabriel Rolón
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
You're saying pain outlasts joy. That seems almost cruel as a starting point for thinking about happiness.
It does sound that way. But I think it's actually liberating. Once you accept that absence will mark you more deeply than any moment of pleasure, you stop chasing the impossible—a happiness that never fades, never gets complicated. You can build something real instead.
And that something real is this word you've created—faltacidad. It sounds like you're asking people to settle.
Not settle. Embrace. There's a difference. Settling is passive, resentful. Embracing your own lacks, your wounds, your absences—that takes tremendous courage and intelligence. It's the opposite of resignation.
You mentioned that love is a way to trick death. That's a strange way to frame it.
It is, but it's honest. We know we're mortal. Love doesn't change that. What it does is make the solitude hurt a little less, the sadness a little less overwhelming. It's a human invention, and it's beautiful precisely because it's temporary and fragile.
When you talk about healthy love being someone who refuses to use their power to hurt you—is that even realistic? Don't people always hurt each other eventually?
They do. But there's a difference between the inevitable pain of being close to someone and the deliberate cruelty of weaponizing what you know about them. A person who loves with health recognizes they have that power and chooses not to deploy it, especially in anger. That choice is what makes love sane.
You said we become eccentric to ourselves because of other people's opinions. How do you find your way back to center?
First, you have to see how far you've drifted. That's the hard part. Most people never stop long enough to notice. Once you do, you have to do the work of listening to yourself beneath all those inherited voices. It's slow. It's uncomfortable. But it's the only way to want what you actually want.