After seven decades of dry-eyed stoicism through life's biggest moments, a 30-second video of a golden retriever greeting a soldier shattered my carefully constructed armor, revealing a truth I'd spent a lifetime avoiding: we've all become so skilled at performing our emotions that witnessing pure, unfiltered joy felt like seeing sunlight after living in a cave.
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The thing about spending seven decades on this earth is that you develop a certain reputation with yourself. You know what makes you tick, what moves you, what doesn't. For me, I was the dry-eyed one. The stoic. While others reached for tissues during wedding vows or dabbed their eyes at graveside services, I stood there feeling everything but showing nothing. It wasn't coldness - I felt deeply. But tears? They simply didn't come.
Then last week, scrolling through my phone while waiting for my coffee to brew, I watched a thirty-second video of a golden retriever nearly knocking over a soldier at an airport. The dog's entire body vibrated with joy, tail threatening to helicopter him into flight, and before I knew what was happening, I was sobbing into my kitchen counter like I'd lost something precious.
When armor becomes identity
Have you ever worn something so long you forgot you had it on? That's what emotional armor feels like after decades. Mine was crafted early, reinforced through years of being the stable one, the reliable one, the one who could handle anything without falling apart. Teaching high school for thirty-two years only strengthened it. You can't cry when a student tells you about their parents' divorce or their struggle with depression. You listen, you support, you hold space - but you hold yourself together.
I remember one particular student who wrote an essay about losing her younger brother. It was devastating, raw, beautiful. I gave her feedback, praised her courage, offered support. That night at home, I felt the weight of her pain pressing against my chest, but still, no tears came. I'd trained myself too well.
This training served me during my second husband's seven-year journey with Parkinson's. While others might have broken down watching him struggle with buttons or forget mid-sentence what he was saying, I became even more composed. Someone had to be strong. Someone had to navigate insurance calls and medication schedules and pretend that watching him fade wasn't killing me inside.
The performance of living
What struck me about that dog wasn't just the joy - it was the complete absence of performance. Dogs don't wonder if they're being too much. They don't moderate their enthusiasm or worry about looking foolish. They don't perform happiness; they simply are happy. When was the last time any of us were that honest with our emotions?
We've become so good at curating ourselves, haven't we? We practice our "surprised" face for parties we knew about. We moderate our laughter to acceptable levels. We say "I'm fine" when we're drowning and "That's wonderful" when we're jealous. Every interaction becomes a small performance, a careful dance of what we think we should feel versus what we do feel.
I think about all those funerals where I stood dry-eyed, not because I didn't grieve, but because I'd learned that my role was to be strong for others. All those weddings where joy felt like something to contain rather than express. All those moments where genuine emotion felt too dangerous, too vulnerable, too much.
What breaks us open
After my husband died, I went through what I wrote about in a previous post - those six months where the outside world ceased to exist. But even then, in my darkest moments, tears didn't come easily. Grief manifested as numbness, as exhaustion, as anger - but rarely as the release of crying.
Why did that dog video succeed where life's biggest moments failed? I think it's because I wasn't prepared to defend against it. There was no time to put on armor, no warning to brace myself. It was just pure, unfiltered recognition of something I'd forgotten existed: unbridled, honest joy.
That retriever's happiness was so complete, so utterly without agenda or artifice, that it bypassed every defense I'd built. It was like seeing sunlight after living in a cave - painful and beautiful and overwhelming all at once.
The courage of feeling
Mary Oliver once wrote, "You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting." Sometimes I think we treat our emotions like something to repent for, something to manage and minimize and apologize for.
But what if the bravest thing we can do is stop performing? What if wisdom isn't about control but about allowing ourselves to be surprised by our own hearts?
Since that morning in my kitchen, I've been practicing small acts of emotional honesty. When my neighbor's new baby made me smile, I let myself grin like an idiot instead of offering a controlled, appropriate smile. When a song on the radio reminded me of my late husband, I pulled over and let myself miss him without trying to talk myself out of it.
It's terrifying, this business of feeling without filter. But it's also like discovering you can breathe deeper than you have in years. Each genuine emotion, however small, seems to create more space in my chest.
Final thoughts
I'm seventy years old, and a dog on the internet taught me something I spent decades avoiding: that joy and sorrow aren't performances we perfect but experiences we allow. That golden retriever didn't know it was being filmed, didn't care who was watching, didn't wonder if its happiness was too much. It just loved with its whole body.
Maybe that's what broke me open - seeing something love that fearlessly. Maybe after years of measured responses and careful control, my body recognized something it had been starving for: permission to feel without editing.
I still don't cry at movies. But yesterday, I laughed so hard at something silly that I snorted, and I didn't apologize for it. It's a start.
