Another day. The alarm rings. You get up. You arrive at the office. After all, you have been working at the company for 24 years. The same routine for the last 24 years. Emails, calls, meetings… It won't be that hard today, you think. It seems like this will be a normal day, like any other. But it isn't, even though you don't know it yet. You are the sales director of a textile multinational that has more than 1,500 employees in the country. As soon as you arrive at the office, the Human Resources director calls you into her office. Let's see what she wants. And suddenly, like a bucket of cold water, she explains to you that the new management requires "rethinking" the sales department. Restructuring, reorganization, and so many other "re-" words that you don't understand. In short, you are fired. Just like that. As if it were nothing. Good afternoon. Thank you for everything. The company that has seen you grow, the company that you have made grow, can do nothing. No one can do anything. These are orders from above. A mix of sweat and chills runs through your entire body. After more than two decades, it is over. What are you going to do now?

This April I have thought a lot about the topic of work. And among my thoughts, I have had the luck (or the misfortune, I still don't know) to stumble upon a project called El Óculo, a sort of simple and short podcast, with a format far removed from the noise of quick 30-second shorts and reels with background music. In the first episode of this digital oasis, they talk about a scene from the legendary movie 'The Shawshank Redemption', in which one of the inmates achieves his long-awaited freedom. This inmate, after spending many years in prison, has to return to normal life: find a house, a job… Do you know what happened? On the third day, he was found hanged in his apartment.

The interesting thing is that the speaker connects this scene with the topic of work… People who live for their profession, for their company, for their occupation, who are "prisoners" of their work for years, who do not build anything that is not related to it, and when they have to change jobs or are fired, and they face real life, they no longer know who they are. They no longer know what to do. Because they have built their identity based on their work. Their work was—literally—everything. That is why I ask you this month: Are you institutionalized in your work? It gives me pause. We will discuss this at the Great Thinkglao of Social Transformation. What do you work for? Does what you do make sense? If these are questions you ask yourself often, we will be waiting for you at the Hipódromo de la Zarzuela in Madrid on Wednesday, May 20th.

Photo of TheNomba world map. If you know anyone in Saudi Arabia, encourage them to join TheNomba, as we only have one student there and the poor guy is all alone.

This photo is the TheNomba world map. At a single glance, you can see where in the world our students are. Just like that, with magnanimity. We are already more than 670 students. It is impressive to hear more and more testimonials from students who are truly stopping to think, and investing time in what really matters. I leave you, for example, with Luis's testimonial, who works as a consultant at a Big4. Or Alejandro's, a 26-year-old medical physics resident.

But not everything important is "global." Lately, I find myself immersed in many conversations about the topic of rural life. And I get the feeling that everyone agrees on the same thing: big cities are becoming uninhabitable (I live in Madrid) and there is a deep yearning to return to the countryside, to the villages, to the tranquility of a normal and daily life. More and more, I hear that "being offline is the new luxury" or things like JOMO (the joy of missing out).

This might seem like a cliché, but I feel that, in relation to the rural theme, it is becoming increasingly difficult to live from a place of wonder. So much input, so much speed, so much noise… We live fast and like headless chickens, slaves to a hyper-productive dynamic that numbs us and makes us weary, as Chul Han already prophesied in his work The Burnout Society. In the end, we end up seeing everything as a right, rather than as a gift. Rod Dreher spoke to us about this at the IV Nomba Encounter in Madrid. Often without wanting to, we turn on autopilot and forget the greatest gift human beings possess: the capacity for wonder. Chesterton said that mediocrity is being surrounded by greatness and not realizing it. Well, that... Really looking forward to the next Nomba event.

Rod Dreher speaking with the Nombas in Madrid last week.

On the other hand, José María Torralba left us several gems in his online live stream titled “Freedom and Commitment”. If I had to summarize it in a central idea, I would tell you that "a valuable life is not built by avoiding commitments, but by choosing them well," meaning that true freedom does not lie in not binding oneself to anything, but in choosing well what to bind oneself to.

This April we are very excited about the viral test we created about Which philosopher you carry inside. More than 2,000 people have already taken it, and we did not expect such a great response. What result did you get? I got Aristotle, Kierkegaard, Chesterton, and Edith Stein—honestly, I didn't expect that.

In the international arena, conflicts remain highly sensitive. The Strait of Hormuz, rising prices, instability in international relations… Alberto Garín's thinkglao two weeks ago, titled "geopolitics without morals," addressed this issue. He spoke, without holding back, about how current geopolitics cannot be understood morally, even though many of us think it can. A rather controversial thesis that raised disagreements among the audience, as it is also such a complex issue. The important thing was that it made us think, and for many, to step out of their comfort zone. That is what thinkglaos are for.

There has been a lot of talk about housing this month. Impossible prices, rents that keep rising, people who work and still cannot make ends meet. We have already heard all that a thousand times. But there is something that is said less, and that weighs on me more and more: Starting a family today is difficult. Much more than it seems. The thing is, housing is a sine qua non condition for starting a family. It is quite basic: you need a place. A home. A physical space to start something. Somewhere you can stay. Where you can build a life that is not temporary. Because a family is not built in thin air. It is not built in shared rooms, or on six-month contracts, or with that constant feeling of "we'll see next year." It needs a certain stability, even if minimal. A place where you can say: something begins here. Here I build a fortress. Here I build, as my teacher Rafael Alvira used to say, a place to return to.

And that, today, is not so obvious. I know people who want to take that step. Not in ten years, but now. But they face a very simple reality: they cannot. Not because they do not want to, nor because they are not ready, but because they have nowhere to go. And gradually, that changes their way of thinking. It is no longer "I want to start a family," but "I'll see later on." And that "later on" keeps getting stretched. It is not just an economic problem. It is something deeper: it is the feeling that major decisions are starting to depend on things you do not control. And that is very draining, don't you think?

I do not have a clear solution. But I do have the feeling that, when something as basic as having a home becomes so complicated, it is not just the market or the economy that suffers. It is the way we begin to live our lives. And that, even if it does not make the headlines, is quite serious.

While all this is happening, we continue on autopilot. And perhaps that is why it is worth, even if only once a month, stopping for a moment and truly looking.

I'll say goodbye until the last Thursday of May!