Life Part of Living
Why I Cried at a Fictional Death But Not My Grandfather’s
“To me there are three things everyone should do every day. Number one is laugh. Number two is think - spend some time in thought. Number three, you should have your emotions move you to tears. If you laugh, think and cry, that's a heck of a day.” - Jimmy Valvano
I wasn’t born in 1993 when Jimmy V originally gave his “Don’t ever give up” speech after receiving the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. But as an avid sports fan I would tune into the end-of-year awards hosted by ESPN every July, and in his honor, the Jimmy V Award for Perseverance would be presented to ‘a deserving member of the sporting world who has overcome great obstacles through perseverance and determination.’ In the lead up to this award they often show flashbacks of Jimmy V’s original speech, which is where I first encountered this quote.
To this day I’m a little surprised that it struck me so profoundly. As I’ve mentioned in past articles, the adolescent boy in me was always drawn to the flashy cars, status symbols, and power influences (think Kobe Bryant Illuminati commercials), not necessarily heart-touching memoirs speaking to softer sides of humanity. But nonetheless, whenever I was asked to reference my favorite quote, that’s the one that came to mind.
I think it just took time for the Hinduism practice of Advaita Vedanta to mold me to the point of realizing why I was so drawn to this quote. (Advaita Vedanta is the act of stripping away identification with things that are not your true Self - body, mind, thoughts, emotions - until all that remains is your true self.) Full transparency, this practice will continue until I’m laid six feet underground, but I’ve shedded some of the bulk of materialism in the last few years, to where I can see the true light of this quote.
If you want more insight on Advaita Vedanta check out my article "Eastern Vs. Western Thinking."
In all honesty, I would bet most humans walking earth right now don’t check one of Jimmy V’s original boxes each day, let alone all three. Think about it, how often do you carve out time or provide the space for your mind to think, reminisce, and reflect? How many times do you have a genuine laughter engulf you to the point you log it on your smartwatch as an ab workout? How often do you cry, visibly moving and releasing your emotions from the internal autonomic nervous and limbic systems into tears?
This is not intended to be a pitch for or against any sort of masculinity standard. Sure, I was raised in an environment where I equated crying to weakness, and I purposefully fought back tears at my grandfather’s funeral to portray an image of strength for my family to lean on, but I know that’s not necessarily healthy. And vice versa, getting emotional about every little thing will only backfire in one's inability to compartmentalize and navigate complex scenarios that require a certain level of stability and equanimity.
But for the better part of the last decade I never cried. It's easy for me to blame it on the SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor) medication I was taking for OCD, since it's a natural emotional regulatory substance intended to keep individuals from experiencing the dramatic highs and lows of life. That was only reinforced after reading the book “Lost Connections,” by Johann Hari. Hari posits that depression and anxiety are often rooted in various forms of disconnection in our lives, such as disconnection from meaningful work, relationships, and a hopeful future. He suggests that SSRIs may sometimes dull our emotional responses, potentially hindering our ability to fully engage with and understand our emotions. This emotional blunting can make it challenging to address the underlying causes of our distress and to live a fully engaged life.
There is no doubt some truth to that claim, but I’m now understanding I’m not great at truly being ‘in touch’ with my emotions. At least beyond the basic level of feeling ‘something’ in my body.
For the last eight years or so, I’ve funneled so many emotions into a large bucket and labeled it anxiety. Once I had any sort of bodily sensation, whether it be light headedness, butterflies in my stomach, increased heart rate - it was synonymous in my brain with anxiety. It doesn’t take a genius to draw the connection between a panic attack exhibiting many of those same symptoms, and your mind trying to protect you against them ever happening again each time that familiar feeling arises.
Overtime I had calibrated my emotions to being either anxiety or neutral/contempt. That in part is also a byproduct of an OCD mind, ruminating on sensations in the body, thus inducing a compulsion cycle of behavior and thinking. So a compulsion would be to quickly label X emotion/feeling as anxiety so I could apply my therapy to combat the cycle from escalation. Paradoxically causing it to continue.
But that also meant my spectrum of emotions was next to nothing.
It really wasn’t until recently, during some classic “peel back layers of the onion” therapy and self reflection that I came to see how I was doing myself a disservice by condensing so many emotions into my one label of anxiety.
When my therapist kept questioning me as to what my anxiety was tied to, and putting a description to the anxiety, I was able to see how the core fear I was ruminating over laddered up to “shame”.
All the anxiety, pain, and suffering I was putting myself through was due to the fact that I was scared to experience shame.
Shame from my parents. Shame from my friends. Shame from the world. Shame from myself.
What I’m wrestling with is at the very core of human consciousness and one of the most distressing OCD themes: the fear of uncontrolled agency. Because I’m responsible for everything I do in this world, that means each mistake I make is because of me. Not some stranger. Not my teacher. Not my parents. it's because of me. That naturally leaves me susceptible to feeling shame because my morals won’t let me deflect any outside judgment to a third party. I’ll go out of my way to find how I was somehow responsible, and thus liable to blame if something goes wrong.
The funny thing is, once that self-reflection hit, the OCD thoughts weren’t quite stinging as much as before because I now had a specific label on the feelings attached with my rumination/compulsion. Which thus had the effect of diminishing their strangle hold over my mind.
My therapist shared the following ‘emotions wheel’ with me in a recent session to help me navigate the world of feelings outside of just anxiety.
As time went on, I referred to that wheel whenever I felt my ‘anxiety’ starting to brew. Our bodies don’t have a complex language of communication with us, it's just a few neuromodulators and nerve synapses trying to alert us of some sort of stimuli. We don’t really have different chemical releases or physiological responses to these generic molecules, and thus if we don’t slow down to fully process what our body is trying to tell us, we’ll continue putting band aids on emotional bullet holes.
Oddly, one example that comes to mind, and that I’m sure will resonate with dog lovers, is when I just stare at my dog gently sleeping, watching the world go by on his ‘pride rock,’ or even just looking into my eyes, I’m overtaken with emotion. I used to think something was wrong with me because I would actually get anxious in those scenarios. But I realize now, I’m just flooded with joy and peace. I’m genuinely happy.
This journey has been helpful in helping me develop a better palette of emotional understanding, and diversifying the spectrum of emotions I actually feel. Now, when I feel a wave in my body, I ask: is this grief? Is it excitement? Is it longing? And sometimes, when I’m lucky, it's all three. Laugh, think, feel emotions. Turns out Jimmy V was onto something.
Yet with all this reconnection with my emotions in the last few months, I haven’t been able to bring myself to tears. I think about sad things. Watch a romance movie with a dramatic ending to try and feel something. Listen to voicemails my grandfather left me—to remember the sound of his voice. But in every case, the tears are dammed up, never falling.
That all changed very recently. And the following event was the catalytic force bringing me to write this article.
My dad had been bugging me for the better part of a year to watch the show “1883” starring Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. As an avid Yellowstone fan, and a viewer of it's spin-off series “1923,” it seemed a no brainer to also watch “1883.” But for some reason I just never had the desire to do so.
Now I know why.
God has his time table, and his timeline is always right. He moved me to watch it when I was ready for its impact. When I was far enough along in my Advaita Vedanta journey to fully absorb the message he wanted me to hear.
Without giving away any spoilers, the last few episodes really weigh heavy on the heart. I was choked up the whole series finale, and then cried my eyes out walking my dogs through the park afterward. When I looked up reviews from other critics and fans, they all mentioned how emotional that storytelling was in the show.
Part of me was relieved to finally complete the Jimmy V triplet of laughing, thinking and moving my emotions to tears. But there was another part of me that couldn’t comprehend how a fictitious story, that I know isn’t tied to any real life characters, was the driving force behind it all. The dichotomy around experiencing emotion by watching a TV show vs. actually living seemed counterintuitive.
Shouldn’t I be emotional about things happening in my life? Or emotional about history and current events as they impact other humans around me?
It was then that I remembered Jordan Peterson’s opening remarks in his Biblical Series lectures. Peterson used Hamlet to demonstrate that fiction can embody a fundamental 'pattern of being'. Universal human truths that resonate precisely because they echo our own moral and psychological structures. He extended this argument to the Bible, suggesting these ancient narratives hold the same archetypal power: we don’t read them for literal history, but because they reflect the shared patterns of humanity.
Peterson contends that fiction’s power lies in abstraction. By distilling life’s messy complexities into archetypal narratives, fiction often reveals ‘more truth’ than dry factual recounting. A film or novel, he argues, can be ‘more real than normal life’ precisely because it uncovers the underlying patterns of being. Patterns that are universal, psychological, and mythological.
I realized the story moved me not because it was real, but because it revealed something real in me. Maybe that’s what great stories do. They bypass logic, speak to the symbolic, and pull something out of us we didn't know was buried.
We all have watched shows and movies where we are ‘rooting’ for certain characters, or praying the plot turns out the way we would ideally like it to. Doesn’t that fascinate you? You’re emotionally connected with made-up personalities and characters to the point of yelling at your screen like they can hear you, stalking Reddit threads for fan theories, mourning character deaths like you lost a friend, or even avoiding episodes because you can’t handle what might happen next. Some people have thrown actual tomatoes at movie screens, others have named their children after fantasy characters, and plenty have flat-out boycotted a series when their favorite character died. And let’s not forget the full-blown existential crisis some experience when their favorite show ends for good, like a strange kind of grief. It's weird, but also deeply human. These stories aren’t just entertainment. They’re mirrors. We project ourselves into them because, at some level, they’re telling our story back to us.
There’s something undeniably magnetic I’ve found watching 1883, Dances with Wolves, reading the Gabriel Allon series, or watching movies set during the Holocaust. It's more than appreciation for the storytelling, it's a longing. A yearning to belong to something ancient, meaningful, and deeply rooted in a shared identity forged through hardship. For me, as a Christian, I’ve found myself strangely drawn to the tight-knit Jewish communities in Israel. Bound not just by faith, but by memory, suffering, and survival. There’s a kind of sacredness in that bond.
The same with Native American cultures. Their honor, connection to the land, reverence for tradition, and the wisdom passed down through generations. It's not about romanticizing their pain; it's about recognizing the nobility that suffering can produce when it's carried communally, not just individually. Maybe what we’re really craving isn’t just the aesthetic of another culture, it's the depth of belonging, the clarity of purpose, and the moral cohesion that many of us feel our modern world has lost.
Without being in touch with my emotions, I couldn’t have possibly reaped the full benefits of all these pieces of art.
All that said. One weird thing I’ve found in being human, is that sometimes our emotions just aren’t calibrated correctly. Life comes at us so fast that sometimes our internal understanding of the changing environment lags behind or never catches up.
What do I mean?
When I travel out of country, I touch down and think, “Hours ago I was in a totally different part of the world. I just sat in a metal cylinder flying 10,000 feet in the air at 300 mph, and everyone is calm as a cucumber.” That’s fucking wild. When you really think about it we should be amazed, scared, and joyful. But those feelings don’t really hit for a day or two.
Or do you ever have the reflection that something is ‘surreal', yet you are absent of emotions. I distinctly remember driving through the Alps with my sister, looking around at the most beautiful snow capped portrait of mother nature I had ever seen, but didn’t actually feel anything. It was almost as if there was a green screen in front of me with a panoramic portrait of the Alps. I didn’t think I was actually there.
Other ways I’ve seen it sneak up on me or I could imagine it hitting others, is when you do something that changes your life. Let’s say you get a dog, or bring your first kid home. Your life has completely changed, but you’re still just kind of living like you always have. There isn’t some emotional climax to the moment that you assumed there would be. It's hard to describe, but sometimes the gravity of reality doesn’t seem to strike the way I think it would. Especially when I know I can be so moved by a fictitious TV show.
I’ve also found a particular melancholy in the fact that emotions fade over time. I’m sure there are evolutionary reasons why humans needed to disengage from past events in order to survive, but it's still sad that the emotional weight of something so meaningful can dull with time. The memory stays, but its gravity lightens.
I actually get upset at myself for not feeling more when I think about my grandfather. Or certain vacations. Or milestone achievements. I get frustrated that I can’t vividly recall the details of moments with people I love. The images are blurry, and the feelings are muted.
I’m always envious of people who, at the flip of a switch, can transport back to exact scenes in their life with rich recall, emotional depth, and perfect context. That’s just never been my gift.
If you asked me to name my favorite memory with my parents, my sister, or even with Boo man, my mind goes quiet. Nothing specific comes to the surface. And yet, I know I love them with all my heart.
Maybe there’s truth to the quote, “People won’t remember what you said. They’ll remember how you made them feel.”
Maybe I should start writing some of these moments down in an emotional journal. Something to keep the feeling alive. Or maybe part of being human is letting those memories soften so that new ones have room to take root.
Which leads me to another paradox I’ve come to witness: the more I try to be present, the less present I become. The more I try to feel, the more numb I become. I’ll be walking through the woods and find myself thinking, “Look at the trees. Feel the breeze. Be present.” But in that very moment, I’m no longer in the experience, I’m narrating it. The second I step into self-awareness, I’ve stepped out of the moment.
And here’s the strange thing: our most joyful, blissful states often don’t register until after they’re over. When we’re truly in flow, fully immersed in a conversation, a sunset, a song, a laugh, we aren’t aware we’re in it. We only realize it was special when we look back and miss it. That’s the paradox of consciousness. The truest moments of presence often escape conscious recognition because to be fully in the moment means we aren't busy noticing it.
If we set out each day to check Jimmy V’s three boxes of laughing, thinking, and crying, we’ll probably end up missing the mark. Taking time each night before bed to reflect on your day might be a better formula for ensuring you don’t become a passenger in your own life.
Spend time developing your emotional spectrum so that you get the maximum utility out of that aspect of your life. It's the fundamental part of being human. Start experiencing the life part of living. Not as a goal to chase, but as something waiting in the ordinary, quietly asking to be felt.