We've all seen kids dressed up on Halloween. It's always the same every year: ghosts, grim reapers, skeletons, Superman, and that one costume based on the painting The Scream. You've got the same kids showing up on your doorstep every year, all saying the same dopey phrase-- TRICK OR TREAT!--as if they actually expect us to sit there and make a decision on whether to trick them or give them candy. Many a year I am tempted to close the door in their faces with nothing but the word trick.
One of those kids came to my house a few weeks ago. I was sitting in the living room watching reruns of The Andy Griffith Show when I heard the sound I had been dreading all night -- the piteous squawking of the doorbell. When I opened the door, a kid no older than six or seven was standing on my porch. He had on one of those skeleton masks with the clear lining in the front of it so that when he squeezed a little "heart," "blood" would cascade down the crevices of his cadaverous mask. He expectantly thrust his already sizeable bag of candy toward me. Sure enough, when he sensed the slightest hesitation on my part, he reached for his little heart-pump, as if by showing me the "blood" trickling down his face he would form some irrevocable bond between us and I would be entitled to give him candy. I guess I'm just a sucker for little kids with bloody masks, but I gave him his candy, closed the door, and returned to my friends Barney and Andy.
That kid got me thinking though. Thinking about how telling of our society his gruesome little costume is. You see, we all have our masks. I go through about ten (or more) masks a day. When I climb into the driver's seat of my Nissan Titan, I put on the mask of Pick-Up Truck Driver. I get to school and for the next eight hours, I rapidly switch between masks like AP Historian, Pre-AP Physicist, and Estudiante de Español Tres. Most Fridays, I step on the stage in the auditorium and wear my Guitar Player and Singer mask for about an hour before transitioning to my Quint-Player mask for the football game that night. I'm exhausted just writing about all the different people I have to be.
But none of them are me. At least, none of them give you a complete picture of who I am. Sure, I do drive a truck and study history and play guitar and all of those things. But if that's all you knew about me then you wouldn't really know me at all. You wouldn't have the complete picture. Imagine if my tombstone read like this: Here lies a high-school Spanish student. It would be a tragedy! Because that's not who I am.
To quote one of the greatest thinkers in the history of mankind, Nacho Libre, "Beneath the clothes, you find a man." Beneath the Foreign Coffee Connoisseur mask of the corporate businessman, you find a flawed man trying to purchase happiness. The second-rate politician wants to get ahead so what does he do? He squeezes his heart-shaped pump and the "blood" of empty promises and wise words he does not mean runs down the surface of his mask, distorting his image and fooling the faceless tides of his particular party into supporting him. But underneath his beautifully sculpted mask he is still just a man searching for completion in a world where completion can't be found.
Why don't we come together as a community of travelers? Let's throw off our masks and journey together down the road to humanity. Imagine the exhilarating freedom of not having to remember which particular mask you have to wear next, of being able to just be you. Maybe we should leave the Halloween masquerading for the children. Maybe we should cut out the trick so we can experience the treat.
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