My favorite holiday for years, as a child I loved to decorate the front yard with skeletons, pumpkins and other spooky things in preparation for Halloween. My brother and his family still have a big party on or near All Hallow's Eve. I even got a tattoo on Halloween some years back. It's a time to dress up and be somebody else other than whoever you really are. Since I've been trying to come up with some way to know who that latter person is, I've concluded that there may be some importance in what one has spent the most time doing during a lifetime. There's a concept stated in some book expousing that if a person does something for 10,000 hours, then he or she is an expert at whatever that activity is. I don't know whether that's true, I've spent years practicing with a guitar but still can't play the damn thing. For the moment, though, I'll go along with the notion that time spent has some revelance to what a person is good at or at least values doing. Had I spent the entire month of October every year for the past 40 years decorating for Halloween, then that must have been very important, and I'd be a Halloween expert or something.

I know a single mom who's devoted herself to her daughter, anyone who knows her also knows what's most important in her life. Another person loves her pets, making sure that for over 30 years, her menagerie has the best care possible. These kinds of people may take a day off once in a while, or once a year, to dress up and be someone else, but it won't change what is so important to them that they've spent years to it. While increasingly rare (or perhaps now impossible), I think there are many positive things to be said for those who have worked for the same company for 20, 30 or even 40 years. It seems like there's less permanence in anything than there once was, but someone willing to devote a lifetime to anything is a person with a lot of innate value. It might be that people now just choose to move on or say "no" or do whatever they do to make a change, but I admire those who have the ability and fortitude to do anything long-term. I think it would give one a sense of stability, one persona, rather than a closet full of past costumes.

Happy Halloween.