Halloween.

Many otherwise responsible, level-headed adults get a little frantic with the magic of this holiday—and no wonder.  Halloween hearkens to the precious realm of dress up and make-believe from childhood.   In each of us, I believe, there is a part that seeks stories and longs to get a bit lost in fantasy.  Whether we get gussied up and go out on the town, or we delight in decorating and transforming a home into a haunt, or we painstakingly assemble a sweet costume for a son or daughter, there is a common element of playfulness and possibility that is shared and enjoyed on this day.

So, we each get our one allotted day of make-believe.  Everyone handles their rations a bit differently.

There are those of us who have been planning our costumes for weeks in advance, amassing materials and applying careful assembly to them in spare moments.  Others of us will snag some last-minute, overpriced polyester getup just before the party.  Some may linger on the periphery of the day as people-watchers, observers more than participants.  And, some of us may duck and cover, feeling annoyed or impatient with the tradition, avoiding the whole ordeal as best we can.

As a child, the question this time of year was always, “What are you going as for Halloween?”  It was a very popular playground topic.

With Halloween in mind, I want to talk about two concerns that are deeply related:  the virtues of trying on new skin, and the problem of disappearing behind a mask.  The season is rich with these metaphors, so now’s as good a time as any to take a closer look.

The fact is, there’s something really fun and special about getting to try on a new skin for a few hours.  Most of us feel stuck in the same old patterns, day after day, and Halloween lets us off the hook from routine for a little while.  It’s like mom has let us stay up an hour after our bedtime.  You get to be whatever you want— what’s not to love about that?

And while I think there’s something truly special about the day, I think we would all benefit much more from having a standing invitation to try new things.  Who says we need an Elvis suit in order to get a little strange or silly?  (Ok, well, maybe that does help a lot.)

As adults, we are not often invited into the realm of the creative or the playful.  Unless you’ve done a very good job of safeguarding these domains by scheduling time for yourself, you’re apt to find your days flush with obligations, errands, and bills.  These are the things your parents may have warned you about when you were young and didn’t understand why they couldn’t get off the phone– right now, right now!!– and come play with you.

Well, now we’ve inherited the to-do list, and boy is it ever hard to get out of that headspace for a little while!  So, this post serves partly as an invitation to wonder about what you might like to trade for that’s fun, silly, passionate or playful instead of opting for the “responsible” options that can easily choke your evenings.  Don’t worry, you can always come back to the obligations later—they aren’t going anywhere.

So what does this practice look like, exactly?

This could mean getting a little bit playful or goofy.  Maybe you play a small (nice!) prank on someone, or you watch a silly scene from a favorite movie.

It could mean trying a new skill on for size.  Some folks can have a lot of fun practicing their right to say no by politely declining requests in order to protect their own time in the evenings.  Others like to try delegating or swapping tasks to change up their routine.

It might mean sitting at a table full of odds and ends and art supplies, and a thirty minute time limit.  Creativity is a great doorway to pass through on your way to playful.

Perhaps it means doing something quite out of character, just to try it.

It may be a kind of gentle idleness—time spent in the hammock, or by a window with a nice view.  It can be a sort of “being” rather than a “doing” sort of thing.

Whatever your choice, you may consider ways to legitimize your practice.  This may mean signing up for a class to help you “stay honest” to the task by protecting time and effort for it.  Or, you may need to do some announcing to protect time in your schedule for the endeavor.  You may get some puzzled looks or jealous retorts—but perhaps that will segue into someone else deciding they’re worth 20 minutes of something silly or creative or idle, too.

Of course, I don’t recommend starting with something high-stakes or big-term.  Just a little sampling will do—a bit of trial and error, with permission to make detours and/or ample modifications to the plan as you go along.

To sum up, some of us need extra help stepping out of routine and into something spontaneous.  The idea of donning a mask and costume may seem childish or silly to us.

On the other hand, there are those of us who wear masks quite often—perhaps every day, even—just to get by.  I want to write a bit about this, too, because there are a lot of us out there.

I have written on this topic before, but it really could use all the attention it can get.  This is because the problem of chronically blending or hiding or acting-not-ourselves is, by its very nature, invisible to most.  In fact, many times we are not even clear when we ourselves disappear into a role or behind a mask until long after the fact, when someone hopefully comes to retrieve us.

The fun in Halloween is being about having the freedom to play and explore.  But something that might be fun or tolerable for a few hours could feel oppressive if we had to do it all the time.  (Elvis suits are notoriously uncomfortable, for example.)

And yet, many of us find ourselves with many roles or masks that no longer fit or maybe even hurt to put on over and over again.  And so, we find ourselves lingering in the wings of life’s theatre, hearing applause and calls for an encore performance, wanting to flee or quit but not wanting to disappoint the audience that awaits us.

Many people who come to me for counseling for self-esteem, depression, and anxiety have been wearing lots of masks.  They come in, confused, because the things that used to work, don’t.  They’ve tried lots of different stuff to make it okay again.  Some have worn masks for so long that they’ve lost touch with their own priorities and dreams.  A big part of the therapy has to do with reclaiming the legacy of those dreams.

Those dreams matter and are worth rediscovering.

So, whatever you think about Halloween, I hope you’ll see it as an invitation this year:  an invitation to silly costumes, playful practices, and permission to wander outside of a world that perhaps feels a bit boxed in sometimes.  My wish is that you’ll try on some new opportunities and shed old masks and traditions that no longer serve you.