Mask-querade

With my second favorite holiday of the year just days away, Halloween, we welcome it's arrival with changing seasons, mass amounts of diabetes-inducing candies and of course week long monster movie marathons. One thing that always seems to grab my eye most at Halloween isn't something you find trick or treating, or even as your peruse the aisles of costumes at your local Halloween express. No, what I am talking about are the notices that our banks so prominently post on their doors which politely ask us patrons not to come in "wearing maks, costumes or any other halloween costumes."

It's a reasonable request. I mean, if YOU WERE to rob a bank, you would more than likely grab a mask and burst on in there. Masks disguise who we are, hiding just our physical appearance and nothing else. Most people think that masks change us somehow. They hide our true character and allow us, if even for one night a year on Halloween, to be someone different. I mean, who wouldn't want to get away from the norm of our everyday existence? It would be so easy to put on a mask and become someone different.

But, life doesn't work that way. We can't change who we are by what we put on to disguise ourselves, no matter how well we are at fooling ourselves into believing that. Deep down, we will always be the same people - that is, as long as we are looking to change ourselves on the outside. Character and personality are traits that lie at the foundation of our human core, our basic identity.

It's so easy in the society we live in to want to wear more masks, to be more things to more and more people. But, in the process of being many things to many people, we lose our ability to be ourselves. Life was not made to be mired in busyness, to be pulled at by the masks we are so easily fooled into wearing. Maybe we have such an affinity for being wanting to be something other than ourselves because we are not comfortable with who we are to begin with.

Well, take comfort that no one wants you to wear a mask. What people really want, deep down is for you to simply be yourself. And that is all that humanity should ever ask, or demand of you.