Unmasking Season
“Every now and then, a person comes along, has a different view of the world than does the usual person. It doesn’t make them crazy. I mean, an acute perception, man...that doesn’t make you crazy”.
“How do you know when someone’s crazy?”
“Well, you don’t always. It depends how many people think they’re crazy”.
-from the film “Rumble Fish”
Well folks, we made it. It's October. All the self-proclaimed “spooky” people are aggressively rejoicing with each falling leaf, while the rest of the population clings desperately to summer.
Love it or hate it, we have entered our yearly season of change. It is fitting that it is during this time of year that we don masks and costumes for Halloween. This year in particular has been riddled with change for me, and it has led me to reflect on the following irony: it is often when we put on a disguise that we feel freest to be ourselves.
I began thinking more deeply about this topic after hearing the aforementioned quotes in the film “Rumble Fish” last week. (If you haven’t seen it, go watch it and thank me later). A little background: there is a main character called Motorcycle Boy, who is a bit of a local legend in his hometown. No one understands him, but everyone is drawn to him. There is a constant debate throughout the film among the townspeople: is Motorcycle Boy “crazy” or not? Is he unstable, or just different? No one can seem to answer this question except for his father. He’s not crazy, his father explains—he simply has a “different view of the world”; “and acute perception”. Now there are plenty of issues with the use of the word “crazy” here, and in general. But we’ll leave that discussion for another time. The point is, here is a character who, to everyone’s confusion, simply dropped the stress that comes with putting up any kind of facade. He is aloof, chaotic, and even reckless. But the thing that sets him apart is that he never bothered to claim otherwise.
Why is it that we tend to whisper about these types of people? My guess is that it is because we resent them for having enough courage—or apathy—to be unbothered by standing out. To risk unsettling people. So, we call them crazy. We tell ourselves that there must be something wrong with a person who rejects the unspoken rule that it is best to keep your weirdness tucked away.
In seasons like this, I see us collectively finding little channels for that weirdness; ways to test the waters while we have a disguise to fall back on. I catch myself doing this too. A certain outfit, or the right environment, can make me a different person. Pluck me out of my relatively tame daily routine and put me at a metal concert, for example. For a few hours, I will be the most “myself” that I can be. You probably wouldn’t recognize me, and that fact alone is fun and liberating. And so, Clark Kent gets (her) Superman moment before returning to the office on Monday. October seems to be our collective, socially acceptable, Superman moment. We can act and speak more freely dressed as mummies, monsters, and celebrities because if anyone objects, we can explain it away as representing a character, not ourselves. As we pick out our masks for Halloween, let us consider which masks we put on every day. In what ways, big or small, are we quashing our “acute perception” of the world? If we really are only as odd as our peers say we are, imagine how that would change if we all peeked out from behind our disguises more than once a year.