Masks

Our Uber pulled up near my friend's home in Lisbon last night, and the street was closed. There were barricades across the entrance, and behind them the whole street was full. My wife and I got out and started walking through, a little surprised, into a crowd of kids and adults all speaking Portuguese and having an amazing time. The kids were dressed up and so were the houses.

Our friend was hosting a small Halloween gathering, and he had turned his home into a haunted house for the night. We had passed another one on the way in, with a long line of kids waiting out front. Over the course of the evening, a few hundred kids came through his living room to collect their candy. Their parents came with them, and what caught my attention was how many of the parents were dressed up too.

There's a permission in Halloween that we rarely give ourselves. For one night, nobody on that street needed to explain who they were. I doubt anyone in a mask was asked what they did for work, or where they were from, or what they had been up to since the last time. Everyone here has agreed to be someone else tonight, I thought, watching another group of parents follow their kids up to the door.

I had assumed Halloween was the night everyone pretends, the one evening a year when adults get to step outside of who they are. Watching those parents, who seemed to be having as much fun as their kids, I was less sure. What if this is the one night the masks come off?

My identity gives me a sense of who I am, a way to connect with others and to move through the world. It also has edges, and most days I don't notice them until I bump into one. So much of how we meet new people, at a party, at a conference, or online, rests on who I have been. There isn't much room for who I am becoming.

My LinkedIn profile tells a very specific story, and that story barely changes from one year to the next, even though I do. People often meet the story before they meet me. That has always frustrated me, and last night I started to wonder how often I keep the story going myself, saying the familiar lines because they are easier than finding new ones. Who is that version of me for?

Maybe we dress up 364 days a year, and Halloween is the night we admit it.

The everyday masks are harder to see because nobody hands them out at the door. There's the former CEO, the author, the investor, the person who meditates every morning. Each one is true in some way, and each one gets worn because others expect it. Some of these labels I chose. Others I picked up the way a sponge picks up water, without ever deciding to.

There have been a few times when the expectations fell away. Moving to Portugal five years ago was one, a place where nobody knew the old story yet. The long stretch my wife and I spent in Sydney two years ago was another. Halloween is a smaller version of the same thing, one night with the rules loosened. Each of these, big or small, has given me a little space to be who I am right then, instead of who I was the last time someone saw me.

There's something in that space worth paying attention to. Being somebody different for an hour, or for a night, lets a part of me speak that rarely gets the chance. Often, once it has spoken, I feel satisfied and drift back to what is comfortable.

The kids on my friend's street knew which face was the mask, and most of them would have it off by bedtime. Some of mine have been on long enough that I'm still working out which ones they are.