WHEN YOUR SOUL QUITS BEFORE YOU DO

Today I write this text for those who have already felt they are leaving pieces of themselves at the office door. It is dense. It is necessary. That’s precisely why I start by provoking a reflection I want you to join me in. See if it makes sense to you:
Isn’t it true that there are two experiences with the power to pierce us with the same overwhelming intensity: looking at the night sky and feeling the immensity of the cosmos, and looking within ourselves and recognizing there a moral compass that doesn’t depend on external approval to exist. The first makes us feel infinitely small, lost in a microscopic point of a universe beyond our comprehension. The second makes us feel infinitely large, bearers of a capacity for choice and discernment that transcends any system, any hierarchy, any structure.
What few realize is that we live this same tension daily. Not only when we contemplate stars or face grand ethical dilemmas, but every day, inside offices, in meeting rooms, in quick hallway conversations, in seemingly trivial decisions we make or that are imposed on us. Every organizational environment is, in essence, a field of forces between these two infinities: the vastness of the systems, structures, and hierarchies that make us feel insignificant — and the vastness of individual consciousness, which never stops whispering that there is something greater at stake than quarterly goals.
The contemporary tragedy of organizations is not in their miscalibrated spreadsheets or bureaucratic processes. It is in something much deeper and more painful: the systematic forgetting that each collaborator is simultaneously an insignificant point in the corporate machinery and a complete moral universe, endowed with values, purposes, and an innate capacity to discern between what expands and what compresses life. When leadership forgets this — or worse, never knew it — they are not just mismanaging human resources. They are annihilating entire constellations of human potential.
THE INVERTED GEOMETRY OF POWER
There is a dangerous inversion that happens in many organizational structures: hierarchical position is confused with breadth of consciousness. It is almost automatically assumed that those in leadership positions also carry an amplified capacity to understand human complexity, to sustain decisions that affect not only results but existences. Reality, however, shows us something quite different. Not every person who leads attained that position through emotional maturity, relational wisdom, or ethical depth. Many got there through technical competence, ability to deliver results, political skill — important qualities, undoubtedly, but which guarantee absolutely nothing when it comes to cultivating environments where human beings can flourish.
The manager who conducts endless meetings not because there is real complexity to navigate, but because they need to feel in control of something that internally escapes them, is exercising not leadership, but a subtle form of temporal violence. Each unnecessary minute there is not just lost time — it is vital energy being drained, creativity being suffocated, the growing sensation that that space does not honor the intelligence of those present. And when this repeats, week after week, month after month, something breaks. Not explosively, but through erosion. Genuine motivation gives way to protocol fulfillment. The spark in the eyes gives way to resigned exhaustion.
Think of that collaborator who entered vibrant, full of ideas, ready to contribute to something bigger than themselves. Slowly, they realized their contributions were systematically ignored, their questions seen as inconvenient challenges, their energy tolerated only when perfectly aligned with a vision they did not help build. What happens to this collaborator? They don’t physically disappear, of course. They remain there, meeting deadlines, delivering demands. But something essential within them goes out. That spark that connected them to a larger purpose, that feeling that their work mattered beyond metrics, that vitality that made them wake up wanting to build something relevant — all of it slowly dissolves, replaced by a kind of functional anesthesia.
“Not the whole / but the cut / the sharpness / of the crystal” — Orides Fontela
Leadership, when exercised consciously, is a precise cut. It does not operate on the surface of appearances, but in the sharpness of perceiving that every decision, every word, every posture communicates a message about the value those lives have within that structure. And when this cut is made without consciousness, without presence, without respect for the human complexity before us, the result is predictable: fragmentation, disconnection, emptiness.
THE INVISIBLE WEAR
There is a form of exhaustion that does not appear on medical certificates, that is not resolved with vacations or poorly calibrated corporate wellness programs. It is existential fatigue — the kind that happens when we spend hours, days, years of our lives in environments that drain not our physical energy, but our sense of purpose. When we wake up and realize we are about to dedicate the next eight, ten, twelve hours of our day to something that does not resonate with what we consider valuable, that does not dialogue with our internal moral compass, that does not make us feel we are contributing to something that transcends our own material survival.
It is not laziness. It is not a lack of commitment. It is the body and mind signaling a profound dissonance between who we are and what we are forced to perform daily. It is the soul asking for passage, saying there is life beyond deliverables, dignity beyond productivity, meaning beyond financial results. But in many organizations, this voice is systematically silenced. Not by intentional malice, but by a kind of collective blindness — the inability to see that we are dealing not with resources, but with people who carry entire universes within them.
Observe that team that started the year with enthusiasm, planning bold projects, willing to go beyond the expected. Three months later, something changed. The energy is no longer the same. Meetings have become spaces of strategic silence, where no one risks proposing anything outside the established script. Hallway conversations, once full of ideas and possibilities, now revolve around contained complaints, countdowns to the weekend, exit plans not yet verbalized but already inhabiting the thoughts of almost everyone.
What happened? Nothing spectacular. No isolated traumatic event. Just the systematic repetition of small compressions: the brilliant idea discarded without real consideration, the contribution appropriated by those with more voice, the growing feeling that no matter how much you dedicate yourself, the structure has already decided who matters and who is merely a spare part. These daily micro-violences accumulate, forming a thick layer of disillusion that no themed happy hour or superficial incentive program can dissolve.
“Surrender, as I have surrendered. Dive into what you do not know as I have dived. Do not worry about understanding, living surpasses any understanding.” — Clarice Lispector
Living within organizations should also be a dive — not into chaotic unknown, but into the possibility of finding there a space where we can be whole, where our complexity is seen as wealth and not as a problem to be managed. But this requires leadership that also surrenders, that dives into the understanding that managing people is not about applying ready-made formulas, but navigating the uniqueness of each trajectory, each story, each moral world that presents itself before us.
BETWEEN THE STARRY SKY AND THE GRAY OFFICE
If you’ve made it this far, it’s quite possible you already understand that each of us carries within us a kind of fundamental ethical code, an intuitive perception about what is right and what is violation, about what expands life and what compresses it. We don’t need philosophy manuals to know when we are being treated with dignity or when we are being reduced to mere instruments for achieving others’ goals. This knowing precedes any theory, any corporate training. It is a constitutive part of what it means to be human.
The problem is that, in many organizational environments, this moral dimension is treated as irrelevant. What matters is if you deliver, if you produce, if you adapt to what is already established. If in the process you need to silence your convictions, if you need to perform an edited version of yourself, if you need to repress legitimate questions about practices that seem ethically dubious to you — well, that is seen merely as “professional maturity,” as “ability to adapt to the corporate environment.”
But there is a cost. There is always a cost. When we spend significant hours of our lives in contexts that require us to leave our moral integrity outside, something in us begins to crack. Not dramatically, but insidiously. We look in the mirror and no longer fully recognize who is there. We talk to people we love and realize we are repeating discourses that are not our own, defending practices that, deep down, bother us. The cognitive dissonance between what we value and what we are forced to perform daily is not just uncomfortable — it is sickening.
And it’s not about naivety, about thinking every organization needs to be a space of full spiritual realization. It is about something much more basic: the recognition that people are not machines, that we have limits not only physical but existential, that we may even perform tasks that do not inspire us, but not indefinitely, not without a cost that eventually manifests in anxiety, depression, psychosomatic illnesses, eroded relationships, lives lived on autopilot.
Think of that moment — perhaps you’ve already experienced it — when you are in a corporate presentation, hearing someone talk about “organizational values” while you know, from direct experience, that those nice words do not translate into real practices. Integrity, respect, collaboration — all there, printed on colorful slides, while in daily life you witness behaviors that contradict each of those words. What do you do with this perception? Many choose the path of protective cynicism: “That’s just how it is, no point expecting anything different, it’s just a job.” But cynicism, while temporarily protective, also numbs. It disconnects us not only from the organization, but from a part of ourselves that still believes it is possible to do things differently.
LEADERSHIP AS COSMIC RESPONSIBILITY
When someone assumes a leadership position, they also assume — even if they don’t realize it — a responsibility that goes far beyond ensuring goals are met or processes work. They assume responsibility for human trajectories, for mental health, for the quality of life of people who will spend more time under their influence than with their own families. This is not an exaggeration. It is simply the math of contemporary life: we dedicate more waking hours to work than to any other activity. If that time is lived under leadership that compresses, suffocates, drains, the impact does not stay confined to the corporate environment. It overflows into relationships, health, the capacity to find joy in simple things.
Leading consciously means, first and foremost, recognizing that each person before you is a bearer of that same double infinitude: the insignificance of being just a point in a gigantic structure and the grandeur of carrying within a complete moral universe, with values, dreams, fears, hopes. It means understanding that your decisions affect not only spreadsheets, but existences. That when you dismiss someone’s contribution without even explaining why, you are not just being efficient — you are communicating that that person does not matter enough to deserve your attention. And that message, repeated over time, becomes internalized, transforms into belief, lowered self-image, unrealized potential.
The difference between environments where people flourish and environments where people merely survive lies not, primarily, in material benefits or well-decorated offices. It lies in the presence or absence of something more subtle and more decisive: the perception that there, in that space, your humanity is recognized. That you can make a mistake without being discarded. That you can question without being seen as a problem. That you can contribute without having to perform an edited, palatable version of yourself. That there is space for your uniqueness, your complexity, for what you carry that is unique and that no other person can offer in the same way.
“The flow of life tangles everything. Life is like this: it heats up and cools down, squeezes and then loosens, calms and then unsettles. What it wants from us is courage.” — Guimarães Rosa
Courage. That’s what it’s about, in the end. Courage to lead differently, to not repeat the same harmful patterns you yourself may have suffered when in subordinate positions. Courage to recognize you don’t know everything, that you need the collective intelligence of the team, that leadership is not control, but cultivation. Courage to create spaces where people can be whole, where vulnerability is not weakness, where questioning is not a threat. Courage to admit when your decisions have negatively affected someone, to correct course, to apologize when necessary.
But courage is also demanded of the led. Courage to not passively accept contexts that violate your dignity. Courage to name what is wrong, even if it causes discomfort. Courage to seek spaces where your contribution is valued, where your presence makes a difference, where you don’t need to leave pieces of yourself outside to function. Because accepting indefinitely to be treated as a replaceable part is not maturity — it is self-destruction in slow motion.
To conclude,
Let us return, then, to the starting point: the starry sky above us and the moral law within us. This tension between external vastness and internal vastness is not just an abstract philosophical reflection. It is the perfect synthesis of what we live every day in our work relationships. We are, at the same time, infinitely small — a tax ID number in a system, a number on a payroll, someone who can be replaced if they don’t deliver the expected — and infinitely large — bearers of a capacity for moral choice, ethical discernment, perception of what dignifies and what degrades life.
The remaining question is not whether you recognize this tension. We all, at some level, recognize it. The question is: what do you do with this recognition? If you lead, are you expanding or compressing the moral universe of the people who work with you? Do your decisions create spaces for breathing or for asphyxiation? Do you see there, before you, complete human beings or just resources to be optimized? If you are led, are you allowing your internal vastness to be systematically ignored, or are you seeking contexts where it can manifest?
Because in the end, what defines the quality of an organization is not its processes, technologies, or financial results. It is something much simpler and much deeper: the way it treats the moral dimension of the people who compose it. Whether it recognizes that there, in those corridors, those rooms, those computer screens, entire universes are pulsating, waiting to be seen, heard, respected. Or whether it continues operating as if people were merely interchangeable cogs, doomed to spin until they wear out and are replaced by others equally disposable.
The choice has always been ours. With every decision, every interaction, every moment we can choose between expanding or compressing the life that pulsates around us. Between honoring the double infinitude that inhabits each person or pretending it doesn’t exist. Between building spaces worthy of complex human beings or perpetuating structures that reduce us to functional shadows of ourselves.
The starry sky will continue above us, indifferent to our choices. But the moral law within us will not leave us in peace until we do something with this consciousness that pierces us. And perhaps that is, after all, the only invitation that matters: to live up to the vastness we carry, not only in speeches, but in daily practices that honor the complexity, the uniqueness, and the non-negotiable dignity of every human existence.
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