I've never been much of a Halloween fan. Maybe it is because growing up in Michigan trick or treating meant getting a costume on, putting a coat on, piling into the car, getting out, taking the coat off, going into a house, staying while Mom and/or Dad visited, putting the coat back on, then repeating the process a few times.
It hardly was worth the candy.
And I've never been a big fan of the witches, ghosts, goblins, blood and gore, etc, that palys a big part in the whole Halloween scene.
In recent years, I've grown to appreciate the holiday a bit more as a parent (though with Parker being "done" with this at 14 and Kelsey being 8, we don't have too many more costume years). And it doesn't hurt that in our neighborhood we all hang out outside with a fire, some cold beverages and snacks and hand out candy from a drive way rather than going to the door for a couple of hours.
Even so, Halloween has just never been my thing.
But about ten minutes ago, I had an aha moment.
Halloween is one day a year when adults find it "ok" to use their imagination. Today there are people all over the world (or any place where Halloween is celebrated) who are pretending.
Yes, people are pretending to be witches and ghosts and vampires. But they are also pretending to be firemen, or nurses, or President Bill Clinton, or you-name-it. They are expressing and proving their creativity.
Pretending is something we are supposed to outgrow when we are kids. But pretending is a great way to exercise our imagination. We want people to have a vision of the changes we are implementing, yet it isn't ok to pretend. We want people to be creative, but it would be best if they followed the dress code and used the right color markers on the white board when brainstorming.
Pretending takes us back to our kidhood. It exercises our imagination, it unleashes our creativity.
That is reason enough to celebrate Halloween today.
Whether you plan on dressing up today or not, do a little pretending today. Consider it your way of celebrating the day.
After we've done that our task is to hold on to what we "learned" about ourselves today - and allow ourselves to be a kid and pretend tomorrow and every day - all the way until next Halloween. Do that and your life will change significantly, and you'll likely have the best costume at the party you go to on Halloween 2007.
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