Freedom Isn’t the Power to Do Anything – It’s the Power to Love

Michael Fierro
6 days ago
4 min read

"Just be yourself." "Follow your heart." "Do what makes you happy."

These are the slogans of our age. They sound harmless, even empowering. We hear them in songs, ads, self-help books, and graduation speeches. They speak to a deep desire for freedom, for authenticity, for a life that feels like our own.

But for all their appeal, these phrases rest on a lie: that freedom means doing whatever we want. That real happiness comes from casting off limits and obligations. That we become most ourselves when no one tells us what to do.

And yet, this version of freedom has not made us happy. It has made us anxious, isolated, and unmoored. We are lonelier than ever, more confused about what we want, and less capable of forming lasting relationships. Perhaps the problem isn’t that we don’t have enough freedom – but that we have misunderstood what freedom really is.

False Freedom: The Power to Do Whatever I Want

Modern culture defines freedom as the absence of constraint. You are free, we are told, when no one limits you – when you alone decide what to do, how to live, who to be. Anything that gets in the way of your desire is seen as oppression.

But this kind of freedom is shallow. It turns people inward, encouraging them to serve their own will above all else. It leads to choices that feel good in the moment but destroy in the long run – addiction, abandonment, broken trust, alienation.

It also leads to paralysis. When there is no truth about the human person, no objective good to aim for, freedom becomes a burden. If nothing is forbidden, and everything is possible, how do we choose? And how do we know we have chosen well?

Freedom without a goal is not freedom. It is drift.

Real Freedom: The Power to Choose the Good

True freedom is not the ability to do anything. It is the ability to do what is good. It is the power to live in accordance with truth and to love rightly.

This is the classical and Christian view of freedom: not as raw willpower, but as a cultivated habit of the soul. A free person is not the one who acts on every impulse, but the one who can govern those impulses in the light of reason and love.

Real freedom, then, requires formation. It requires learning how to desire what is worthy, how to act with integrity, how to give oneself to others. It is not simply given – it must be practiced.

Love Requires Limits

Nowhere is this clearer than in love. Love, by its very nature, demands boundaries. A spouse is not free to betray their vows without destroying the relationship. A parent is not free to ignore a child’s needs without doing harm. The more we love, the more we willingly bind ourselves for the good of another.

This is not slavery. It is maturity. It is the kind of freedom that costs something – and because it costs something, it means something.

The only limits love knows are those built into its very nature: it wills the good of the other, and therefore cannot turn against the other.

Disordered Love of Self

We must love ourselves. But we must love ourselves rightly.

Modern slogans encourage self-love, but often in ways that become self-indulgence. When self-love becomes inordinate – when we love ourselves to the exclusion of others, or above the truth – it turns destructive.

Inordinate self-love enslaves us to our desires. We become reactive, impulsive, easily offended, easily bored. We become less capable of real love, because we are too absorbed in protecting our comfort.

True self-love seeks what is good for the self – not what is easy, not what is pleasurable, but what leads to flourishing. And this always includes responsibility, humility, and sacrifice.

“Two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God even to the contempt of self.”— Saint Augustine, City of God

The Model of Christ

Jesus was the freest man who ever lived. And He used that freedom to pour Himself out for others. He did not cling to His rights or guard His comfort. He chose the Cross.

This is real freedom: not the power to escape suffering, but the power to suffer for love. Not the power to protect the self at all costs, but the power to give the self away.