Mariah Carey’s Always Be My Baby was just audible over the constant buzz of dozens of conversations blending together in the Salt Lake City International Airport’s A terminal.
“Did you see that couch on Facebook Marketplace…
Your mother’s been in the bathroom a long…
Why does an airport coffee cost…
I didn’t realize those were so…
Why don’t they load the plane from the back to…”
As I walked through the terminal, each sentence started with the purpose of communicating something but trailed off as the end was drowned out by something new hitting my ears. The voices overlapped with chaotic, layered disresolve, like pieces of different lives intersecting, just for a moment, before continuing on their individual trajectories. Travelers, moving through the terminal in a steady, uninterrupted current, each one headed somewhere specific even if the reason behind the movement or the moment felt less defined than wherever they were going.
Some were likely on their way to see a family member in a city that still felt like home even after twenty years away. Maybe others were chasing something a bit more abstract like meeting with investors that might validate (with money) an idea that had lived too long in the crowded spaces of their mind. It might have been the obligation to attend the fifth trade show that year blurred into the previous four.
Maybe they were going home.
Everyone was going somewhere with their digital boarding pass in hand, seat assignment waiting, yet it was hard to ignore the sense that fewer people could say in words what they were looking for, really, once they arrived.
That idea settled in my mind as I walked the 1km length of the “A” terminal. It wasn’t a philosophical conversation with myself. I save those for my long runs. This came because of a decision I had to make that refuses to rest calmly in my mind.
We had to realign some things with our team, which meant ending a few agreements earlier than expected with people who were capable developers and individuals I genuinely liked and respected. They are the kind of people you hope to work with for a long time. Their situation, however, was reasonable: time split between two companies and competing priorities that made full commitment to our team unrealistic. What I needed, and what our business requires right now, was a level of focus they couldn’t give consistently, and so the decision, well outlined on my sticky notes, carried a heaviness that didn’t dissipate once it was made.
I’m relatively new at being “the big boss.” I believe I handled it in the right way, or at least as close to “right” as these situations allow, without burning any bridges or exchanging harsh words. We parted on terms that preserved the personal relationship, I think, even as the work arrangement ended. It still hurt more than I expected. For me, it felt like something with real potential was interrupted before it could reach its natural conclusion. After everything was done, the team lead sent me a message that prompted this missive: “I don’t feel in the right to be happy, you know.”
Her thought stopped me. It was simple, honest, and familiar. I’ve sat with the same feeling many times in the last year and a half. Most of the time in business, we over-edit our emotions before we express them. Thankfully, she didn’t
This is another theme that’s recurred in recent years: where something settles outside long before you find internal resolution. The decision is made and there’s a seemingly clear path forward, but part of you still lingers behind, still trying to catch up to what just happened. Relief might be there, but maybe it’s fragmented; broken up by periods of regret. Relief and regret can share the same space as we remember what we had to let go or leave behind. Unfortunately, those two things can remain at odds for an uncomfortable amount of time. It is the real sense that you’re carrying more than one truth at the same time, even when the world around you moves on, blissfully ignorant that nothing is resolved.
It’s a bit weird to me that the unresolved tension of that decision reminded me of a scene from Home, where Oh is trying to attract the attention of the Gorg ship. Gratuity “Tip” Tucci uses the mirror she’d given to her mom to signal the Gorg Commander and point out Oh’s location before he’s crushed. The ship’s massive “claw” descends on Oh’s location while the sound fades away. For a minute, time stops for Tip; an outcome already decided. Then there’s the simple, absurd-sounding backup beep as the claw lifts. Oh emerges completely unscathed (except for the possibility of a number three). Tip, tears streaming down her face, runs to him, pulls him into a crushing embrace, and then immediately hits him, her reaction shifting from absolute relief to frustration in a way that feels so real. (I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve cried along with that part more than once.)
That moment captures something I think we all recognize but most can’t really describe. It’s when two fully formed emotions occupy the same space. They neither cancel each other out nor wait their turn to be felt. Life’s like that sometimes.
There are other times, however, where emotions aren’t additive because one overpowering emotion consumes all available space, leaving no room for distraction or background processing.
The day my mom died, the day I married my best friend, the day each of our children came into the world, and the day I found out my wife had cancer all exist in that category. There’s not a shared emotional “tone” there, but they do share the same kind of completeness and intensity. The emotions I felt those days swallowed whole all the awareness I had. They weren’t the kind of days when I could multitask my way through or compartmentalize until later. The feelings of those moments occupied everything, leaving no room for the low-level noise and distractions that usually accompany everyday life.
Those kinds of whole-soul moments are rare, but they are unmistakable when they happen because they stand in such stark contrast to how most of life actually unfolds. Most days aren’t defined by a single, consuming emotion that changes the orbit of everything else around it; instead, they are mostly fragmented, divided across responsibilities, conversations, decisions, and tradeoffs that, by their definition, can’t resolve in the way a Hallmark movie does. You move from one thing to the next carrying pieces of each moment with you, never quite setting anything down and also not allowing any one thing to take over completely either.
The airport scene is an interesting parallel for that kind of existence, where half-hearted conversations and unfinished thoughts blend together while people move with clear destinations but not always clear reasons. Everything keeps moving, whether you’ve processed it or not. And really, we can’t process it all. There’s too much to take in. A hard decision is followed by the next obligation or a profound realization gives way to something practical that needs your attention. Even relief can get interrupted before it has time to settle into something that lasts.
In that context, the statement “I don’t feel in the right to be happy” makes sense because it feels incomplete. It doesn’t account for other things—everything—that exists alongside it. Happiness, in that moment, doesn’t show up only because the thing is resolved. Relief, loss, uncertainty, anger, and a host of other emotions can exist all at once.
We tend to associate a “full soul” with intensity, as if the most complete experiences are the ones that stand above everything else. That idea starts to fall apart, though, the longer you sit with it. A full soul isn’t reserved for extreme moments, and it isn’t built on everything lining up the way you expected. It’s what happens when you stop turning away from what’s in front of you, whether it feels settled or unresolved.
Sometimes that means not interfering with what you’re feeling. It’s simply allowing yourself to “feel the feels” as my wife likes to say. It might also be the willingness to carry something forward for a while without needing it to settle in comfortably. You can feel relief and still feel the weight of what it took to get there. You can know a decision was right and still feel the cost of it.
Even when a moment feels full-souled, you often can’t simplify things into a single feeling. Most of the time, it doesn’t come together in a way that’s easy to explain.
An airport keeps moving whether people feel ready or not. People board planes, flights leave, and no one waits for the individual passenger to make sense of it all first. Life usually works out the same way. Most people move forward without having everything sorted out.
Most of the time, that’s the only way: to keep moving forward even when some things don’t make sense.
You don’t need to understand everything or have perfect resolution before you take the first step. Fullness isn’t about having it all figured out. It’s about not pushing away parts of the experience just because they don’t fit together yet. Maybe some never will.
Most days won’t be whole-soul days. That doesn’t mean your soul is empty. It means you’re still carrying what matters.
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