It’s the end of October again, and I’ve noticed scatterings of children test-driving their Halloween costumes in the super-market aisles, making sure they work! Hidden inside their new identity, they are no longer just a ‘child-in-a-supermarket’! They’ve been transformed by their costume and they want to be sure that they’re all set for the big night. It’s delicious fun to become someone or something else, isn’t it?! Costumes enable us to explore completely different realms than those we ordinarily inhabit.

COSTUME PARTY

Cho:It’s a costume party, and everyone is here! D-A7, D-A7-D

It’s a costume party, and everyone is here! D-A7, D-A7-D

You wear a blue dress, you, red sneakers A7-D

You wear a suit and tie A7-D

You wear flowers, you wear stripes A7-D

You put make-up on your eyes! E-A7

Chorus

You wear brown skin, you wear white

Your head is clean and bare

You poked holes through your earlobes

You’ve got a wart, I bet, somewhere!

Or maybe you dye your hair!?

Chorus

We may be blind, or we wear glasses

We st-stutter when we talk

Sometimes our ears just do not hear

Or we use wheels when we walk!

Chorus

Our disguises could win prizes

Each one’s qualified

But the only thing that really matters

Is who we are inside!

Chorus (2x)

Written by Peter Alsop, ©1987 Moose School Music (BMI)

On Pluggin’ Away & Costume Party DVD

https://www.peteralsop.com

We all wear costumes. Every day, the clothing we put on is essentially our costume for the day. And when we wear different costumes, we get to see the world through different glasses, which is great! We learn so much by exploring other diverse ways to go through our lives. We build new skills and stories for ourselves when we’re exposed to new and different ideas from simply rubbing shoulders with others who are not like us.

It’s true that most of what we learn comes from people around us, and the people with whom we are most familiar are, … our own families! But some of the family lessons we absorb can be very difficult to ‘change’ later on. As we get older, we discover that we need to shed some of the beliefs and behaviors we grew up with, ... in order to continue to grow.

Our costumes provide us with an ‘outward appearance’ that might not fit us exactly, but that’s okay, because we need to ‘try on new things’ to see how they fit us.

It’s interesting to see how our ‘costumes’ affect other people, and how they respond to what they see. The very same ‘costume’ can generate a bunch of different responses from different people. Have you noticed that when we see someone who is ‘unfamiliar’ or different than we are, most of us are very ‘curious’ about this ‘new’ person. Some of us become extra cautious, and even suspicious or fearful of other folks who look strange to us.

I’m mostly curious about people who look different than I do. I have friends who pay close attention to how others look, and some of those friends constantly worry about themselves, wondering if they ‘fit in’ or are ‘approved of’ by others. They seem preoccupied with making sure that they don’t stand out as ‘different’. I have other friends who seem to feel ashamed of their appearance. They kind of hide themselves, and try to stay out of the limelight.

It’s easy to forget that beneath our elaborate costumes and disguises, our covers and masks, that all of us humans feel very similar feelings; happy, sad, scared and angry. These are where we connect. These are what we have in common and where we share our vulnerabilities. And when we understand this, our external costumes become fascinating and delicious, and a cause more for curiosity than fear.

Some costume features we get to choose, like our clothing, hairdo, hats, make-up or earrings. Others factors of our appearance, we’re born with, or we acquire as we live; such as our skin, scars, our hair color, our gender, our baldness, our age or any of our other visible physical differences. We usually feel more comfortable being in a group of people who look like us because we feel familiar with them. We all need to feel like we belong, so gathering ourselves into these homogeneous groups is usually fine, unless we begin to avoid other groups of people who ‘don’t look like us’. Because when we spend time with people who are different than we are, we get to know them, and our nervousness about their differences drops away, and it becomes easier for us to notice and appreciate our similarities.

For those of us whose family of origin, our ‘birth family’, didn’t feel like a safe place, our fear of being rejected may be a big part of how we costume ourselves as we relate to others. I learned that we can actually choose to make our own safe place by asking some of the friends we hang with, who feel comfortable and who support us to be part of our own ‘family of choice’!

Overcoming our own fear of rejection is necessary for us to break out of our isolation and start new friendships. That’s why having a Costume Party is a good idea. Especially as we learn how to be a ‘safe place’ for others, where we don’t immediately judge them. When we feel like we are in a safe place, we can all reveal ourselves to each other, instead of trying to strip away each other’s masks!

Thanks for stopping by, … I’m Peter Alsop. Please share any of my posts that might be helpful to someone you know.

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