Happy Halloween!

 

My favourite time of the year. Love putting on my spooky witch costume but since this year Covid-19 will be making Trick or Treat very different, I might as well spend it doing some reflection on top of the candles I usually light next to my plastic pumpkin. Fate would have it that today my daily meditation from Calm would be about the masks we wear all year long, sometimes all lifelong. No, I am not talking about the masks we now have to wear in public places, even though it’s an interesting coincidence. I just got myself thinking if this isn’t the real reason why some people hate Halloween (and Carnival as well) so much. Apart from religion who always hates anything minimally related to the occult, my mind started wondering if this isn’t a day that we unconsciously hate because it somehow reminds us precisely of those masks we so often wear and even refuse to take off. Nobody likes being caught red-handed, right?

I wrote a while ago about The Odd One Out and how people who somehow don’t follow the status quo are so often discriminated. Unfortunately, especially when we are still young and inexperienced, we tend to wear masks in front of other people aka pretending to be someone we are not just to please our peers. We act more extrovert than we are. We pretend to like something we actually hate just to fit it. We wear bright colours when we actually would prefer darker colours. We say we agree with something when we don’t. We laugh when we feel like crying. The list is endless.

In my teens I used to be such a person. I’ve always liked heavy metal music but said I didn’t because I didn’t want to be considered weird. Gosh, the concerts I’ve missed in life because I never used to have a single friend I could tag along. I only met my first metalhead friends in my late teens, early twenties. Funny enough, my very first heavy metal concert was Marilyn Manson. Ah! I was 18 and what a start.

Anyway, what kind of masks do we wear on a regular basis? I don’t exactly pretend to be someone I’m not anymore but sometimes I find myself not talking about certain things I absolutely adore with people I know will not understand it. I just refuse to wear masks in front of them, I’d rather not spend time trying to explain how I feel. Even my werewolf trilogy has been waiting in my laptop files for more than ten years now because I seldom spoke about something most people frown at. I like horror books and movies, I like spooky things, but I don’t speak about it to people I know will not get it.

Another example: just this week, I finally caught the little naughty rat that destroyed my washing machine. Mind you, I caught it with a humane trap and later on I released this rodent far away, back in the wild. The havoc it caused was immense (I’m still waiting to find out if this machine is still worth fixing or if I might as well buy a new one) but I swear for the life of me, I could NEVER poison it, kill it or somehow harm it. I can count with the fingers of just one hand the number of people who actually understood why I refused to harm the little thing. Most of them thought I was nuts and ridiculously tolerant. Needless to say I omitted from this people that I actually stroked this tiny rat’s head before releasing it, lest I give them a heart attack. But to my understanding, the animal had no idea what it was doing, what it did was in its nature and, obviously, killing it would sort absolutely nothing in the already messy situation.

I don’t really blame these people even though their “you should kill it” attitude annoys me. After all, we live in a brainwashed society where we are supposed to follow the “norm”. It’s normal and acceptable to be disgusted of rats and mice, so the right thing to do is to kill them. The same with cockroaches and other “dirty” animals. What is not ok is to spare their lives, whoever does it has lost his or her mind. It’s also not ok to like spooky things. Well, I am not such person. I actually find rodents cute and even though I’m not exactly fond of cockroaches and other insects, I always find a way to set them free without harming them. I don’t like spiders either and used to be a proper arachnophobic. But I respect their role in the circle of life so I do not punish them for being in the wrong place at the wrong time or follow their nature. Aren’t we, humans, supposed to be the rational ones? So why do we behave irrationally with these tiny creatures? They may not look cute but they are part of this planet. And while I understand we need to keep our homes clean and get rid of these animals before they destroy everything around, I also believe there are humane ways of doing such.

This is one of the masks I refuse to wear ever again. In general, I think lately I’ve been doing a good job getting rid of my masks, even though I still have a lot to do. We are all a work in progress after all. Getting rid of your masks gives you a very pleasant feeling of liberation. Suddenly you know you don’t have to please people, the only thing that matters is to please yourself. I’ve lost friends in the process (were they really my friends?), but I’ve come to enjoy my own company and solitude. In Portugal, where I am originally from, we have a saying that goes like this “Mais vale só do que mal acompanhado” (Better alone than with bad company). I absolutely love it and agree with it.

So, since this year Trick or Treat is so limited – guys, really, please avoid crowds and don’t do silly things, stay safe for yourself and for those around you – I felt this was the right opportunity to talk about a certain type of mask. What masks do I still wear that should get rid of asap? What masks do YOU still wear?

Happy Halloween!

PS – Please wear your cloth or medical mask in public. That’s the only one you should be wearing at the moment.