On the way to pick up my mother for dinner tonight, I passed a group of elementary schoolers and their parents wearing masks. One was a gorilla. Another was a scary clown (shame on the parents!). The kids were jumping around and running in circles, swinging their plastic pumpkins (no doubt filled with candy) excitedly.

It can be so much fun to put on a costume. Even as an adult some of my favorite parties have been masques. There is so much freedom when I’m behind a mask. I can move and dance in silly ways without fear of being judged. In a mask, the barriers and differences between people melt. History can be erased. New personalities can be tried on. Everyone, no matter who, can lose themselves in joy-filled connection with strangers, former foes, and friends alike.

But costumes aren’t just for fun, they’re important – I remember learning in school how play-acting is a critical part of childhood development. Children need to play with fantasy and try on new personas so they can grow up. It’s an important part of how they figure out who they want to become. With a child – that is easy to understand. We expect children to change constantly. We’d be scared if they didn’t. But with adults – change can seem disturbing. We as a society are not always supportive of people changing and trying on new personas — though we give lip service to it.

And so, it can be scary to to publicly try on a new costume while we are still unsure exactly who we want to become. What will people think? Will they think it’s a sign you are weak, have poor judgment, or are deserving of pity? If the new costume means you don’t participate in the same activities as before, will people feel hurt, or think you now believe yourself superior to them? Will people think you are selfish? After all, most relationships are held in stasis at a dynamic equilibrium - if one variable changes, many other variables shift too, whether they like it or not. So if you put on that new costume, will you inadvertently force others to change too in ways they don’t want to? And if so, will they resent you for it?

What a pain! Given all of that, it’s easy imagine why I sometimes look at masks (those potential tools of joy and transformation) and see them as offering another possibility — a way to hide my shame, to avoid conflict, to feel protected, to avoid facing what I fear, and ultimately to attempt to keep everything just as it is. 

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Looking back on the last year, I see how much positive change has occurred. I attribute much of that to my decision to spend this year on the road, in new places, and meeting strangers. In that I was free to put on and discard so many costumes. Not only was this fun, it helped me explore who I wanted to become! Moreover, I could do this without guilt or fear. Being on the road away from everyone I knew meant I could experiment widely and freely without having to worry that doing so would invite judgment from (or hurt the feelings of) my closest friends and family.

And what costumes did I want to try on? Particularly, and especially coming out of my Baptiste training in February, I wanted to learn to embody confidence, openness, positivity, and joy. At the time, I had limited lived experience of what that actually meant! As I’ve tried to figure that out, I’ve made all sorts of missteps. But now, eight months later, what started as amorphous concepts (confidence, joy, openness, etc) have begun to take on definite shapes. 

And yet, the constant moving and play has a flip side – if I’m only surrounded by people who never knew me before — who will say the hard things that only a friend of many years can say? Who will hold me accountable? How can someone call me out if they don’t know anything about me except what they are seeing in that moment?

It’s not that I haven’t been in contact with people from my old life who could have called me out. Obviously this blog has been a tangible way I’ve kept many of you in the loop with many of the large movements of this journey! Moreover, it’s not like I avoid feedback. I’ve long prided myself on taking in and implementing feedback (particularly at work). But sometimes, I fell into the trap of only sharing (and writing about) the new costumes I was putting on that I intuited would be universally approved. Meanwhile, I was continuing to cling to others masks I’ve long used to hide parts of my life that I either can’t (or was not ready to) yet change.  

I need look no further than this blog to see that. 

A lot has happened this year, and I’ve shared a lot of it here – some of it quite raw. It’s all been true. But a lot has also happened that I haven’t shared. Or at others times, I’ve framed my stories in certain ways to conceal key facts, which have been central to my journey. I have all sorts of excuses for that, many of which I convinced myself were highly sophisticated and wise (e.g. privacy, prudence, and respect for your time), but if I’m honest, truly honest, at the core of nearly all the hiding has been my persistent fear that if you (my family, my friends, and my readers) knew the “whole truth” – you’d think less of me. And in the extreme, if you thought you loved me, maybe you’d see that actually I didn’t deserve that love after all.

Saying that feels like a great defeat. After all, it was also in my Baptiste Training that I realized my old way of being was creating a reality where I believed “I didn’t deserve to be loved.” I have been doing so much work to recognize when that old story was showing up and distorting my behavior. I know I’ve made great progress. And yet… here it is again.

Now, I don’t want to overstate things. This blog, which I created to try to embody transparency – has often played an important role in enacting my new ways of being. It’s kept me connected to you while I’m on the road. It’s helped me process some very difficult experiences. It’s led me to be open about a number of things I definitely would have hidden in the past. I’m proud of that. However, at times I’ve also used it as a tool to attempt to elegantly conceal what I didn’t want you to see. For instance, I’ve never written about the various forms of privilege that have enabled me to go on this journey in the first place. Instead, I’ve tried to play up my frugality, or imply I’m just an average guy from an average middle class family. That’s silly - as many of you know, or probably easily read between the lines. Or even more profoundly, I have not written, even in coded reference until now, about my two year-long and ongoing divorce process. It, as much as my grandmother’s death, is a significant reason I’m on the road this year. I will continue not discuss the specifics of it in this medium. I believe concealing that from the internet is appropriate. But not even mentioning that it’s happening, or sharing how it’s emotionally impacting me makes no sense if I want this medium to convey to you what’s happening on my emotional journey.  

At the end of the day, I have to decide, what is the purpose of this blog. Is it to amuse you? Is it to gain and keep admirers? It is to get a book contract? Is it to be known? Is it to form and keep community who can hold me accountable and help me grow even as I try on new costumes?

Of course, I know the “right” answer – but it’d be disingenuous for me to say that now that I have laid the choice out in those terms, the lesson is forever learned. This has been a battle for decades now. So, I expect this to be an ongoing front for some time still before the war is won for good. But in putting it out here, I’m asking you all to help me, and trusting that if I actually want to change, I need to trust that the people who truly care about me will continue to do that even when I’m messy, broken, and have made mistakes.

After all, how will I ever be able to take in and accept love (or even simple support) if I feel it’s based on a lie?

I don’t say this in the hopes that you tell me - “you are great as you are!” No, I say this in the hopes that if you truly care about me, as I know so many of you do, you’ll see me as I am, and be a stand for me as I change. [For instance, as it relates to this blog, I’m giving you all permission to call BS if you feel I’m shifting toward inauthenticity or people pleasing.]

And so - here I admit publicly that I’ve loved masks for the wrong reasons. I’ve used them as tools of hiding for too long. I see that this way of being no longer serves me. I want to change that, and I need your help to hold me accountable as I do.

I know that saying this, and living this, will mean I may actually be seen more now — all of me — even the parts I want to hide. And although it’s scary, right now in writing this, and sharing it with you, I also feel so much hope for everything that future can now become.

Happy Halloween.