The Permission to Be Someone Else

When I think about Halloween as a kid, I remember leaving the house as the sun began to set and coming home hours later. The streets were filled with kids. For one evening, the neighborhood felt like a place where almost anything could show up at the next door.

I enjoyed the freedom of it. And I loved dressing up.

I couldn’t tell you which costume was my favorite. That was more than forty years ago. What I remember is the feeling of putting on a mask or clown makeup and becoming someone else for a little while.

The costume helped make the transition. It gave me a different confidence. I was still me, but I could step into a character and let that character lead for a few hours.

Nobody needed an explanation. It was Halloween. Pretending was part of the deal.

A Little Room to Imagine

There’s something interesting about how easily we accept that permission on Halloween.

We put on something unusual, act a little differently, and let ourselves be playful. We don’t need to be particularly good at it. We don’t need to explain where it’s going. The experience is enough.

The rest of the year, that freedom can be harder to find.

We have responsibilities, routines, and familiar ways of showing up. People know what to expect from us. We know what to expect from ourselves. Somewhere in there, an idea can get dismissed with a quick, “That’s just not me.”

I wonder how often that means we don’t enjoy something, and how often it means we haven’t given ourselves much room to imagine it.

A costume makes that room obvious. It offers a temporary arrangement. For tonight, you can try this. You can be a little ridiculous. You can see how it feels.

There’s no requirement to become that person permanently.

Where Curiosity and Creativity Meet

I think curiosity and creativity are closely connected. Both involve entertaining a possibility before we know what to do with it.

Curiosity asks what might be there. Imagination gives us somewhere to go with the question. As children, we could spend hours in that space, making things up as we went.

As adults, we often want an idea to explain itself sooner.

What’s the purpose? Will I be good at it? Is this worth my time?

Those are useful questions in plenty of situations. But asked too early, they can leave very little room for play. We start evaluating something before we’ve had a chance to enjoy imagining it.

Even our interests can become assignments. We need to improve, finish, produce, or have something to show for the time.

I value finishing things. I also wonder whether every curious impulse needs to become a project. There ought to be room to play with an idea simply because it interests us, even if it never becomes anything more.

Beyond One Evening

Halloween looks quieter on the streets around me now. I don’t see the crowds of kids I remember. More of the activity seems to happen at organized trunk-or-treat events.

Those gatherings have their own fun and creativity. Still, the change makes me think about the space we leave around an experience. How much is already arranged, and how much can we invent for ourselves?

That question applies to adults, too.

I remember having hours ahead of me and a character to inhabit. The costume supplied a beginning. My imagination could take it from there.

Maybe that’s the part worth carrying beyond Halloween: a little room to follow an idea without knowing exactly where it belongs in our lives.

Putting on a mask never made me an entirely different person. But the confidence I felt while wearing it was real. It came from somewhere in me, even if pretending helped bring it out.

That leaves me wondering what else we might discover when we give ourselves permission to play.

Something To Consider