Our baby loves dogs.

His eyes light up as soon as he sees one. His arms extend outwards, his lips turn up, and it’s a matter of seconds before he’s unable to constrain his joy any longer and something between a delighted squeal and an unhinged canine howl is let loose in its general direction. Sometimes, the dog is receptive to this small, hairless symbiote riding atop a strange hooman. Other times, the dog will give me a long look as if to ask, “why?” and also, “how make go away?”

If the dog is a known quantity, for example one of the two dogs owned by his aunts in Oregon who he happens to be visiting with this week, we might allow him to get closer. Tentatively, he might reach out for a stroke or receive a gentle but unsanitary lick from a likeminded fluffball.

As I write this, he is lying in a travel crib, by mutual agreement sleeping soundly for an hour to an hour and a half but in actuality singing at the top of his voice. His songs don’t yet have words or a tune to speak of. They’re a direct outpouring from his soul, unfiltered by templated meaning or rote learning. He has no idea that we’re listening. He’s just happy.

He burps when he wants to burp. He farts when he wants to fart. He lets his joy and his displeasure be known whenever they are felt. Sometimes he makes weird crunching noises like a fax machine even though he has never heard or seen one. He can be mesmerized for hours on end by videos of dancing fruits and vegetables set to a MIDI bossa nova beat (the pineapple winks knowingly; he has very clearly seen some things, but we’re left to guess exactly what they might be). He enjoys bouncing up and down on his weary collection of human trampolines and absolutely must explore the whole house, his tiny hands slap-slap-slapping on the wooden floors as he crawls around at high speed, at least once per day.

I feel like we somehow lose this fearlessness when we get older. We are not, unkind words from people who should know better aside (c’mon), uninhibited babies. We get wrapped up in the to-ing and fro-ing of adulthood, and in particular in the whole business of being who we think we should be instead of who we actually are. We wear formal attire as adult cosplay and sometimes dine at fancy restaurants and read literature and ponder whether we should acquire a metal fish slice because Wirecutter says that no kitchen should be without one. We have more conversations about compound interest (behold its power!) than we could have ever predicted.

“Burpus,” I say, matter-of-factly, when he burps. “Fartacus,” I announce when he farts. My own unseemly childishness hides behind his perfectly acceptable baby-ness, as if having a baby is umbrella insurance for acting like one. When I’m the Burpus, I apologize. When he’s the Burpus, I herald it.

Adults are expected to hide their humanity behind a theatrical mask. Babies are allowed to hang loose.

The people we allow to be themselves, when it really works and is done in a place where we can see it, are also heralded for it. Writers shed light on their humanity, and through it, ours. Artists make us see the world in a whole new way. Musicians help us feel. If any of them held back and let their humanity lie behind the mask, they would fail. It would be bad art, reflecting the mask itself rather than the people underneath. Even the great entrepreneurs put their inner selves out there. It is not unthinking or fearless; these are some of the most anxious people you will ever meet. They are terrified of what they’re doing because we’ve all been conditioned to be afraid of it. But they do it anyway, and it improves the experience of being alive and being human. Artists provide their own umbrella insurance for the rest of us, in a way. They teach us to loosen the mask just enough to let us remember who we are.

My baby has woken up now and is exploring a sunbeam as it falls across a leather chair. He turns and looks at me and smiles broadly before dropping to the floor and slap-slap-slapping his way across the floor. His mask has not yet grown, and somehow, I hope it won’t. I hope he gets to be himself forever: hanging loose, pure and joyful and free.

Part of the Indieweb Carnival for July: moments of joy.