I want to talk to you tonight: not as your affable host here at the Bistro, nor as your gregarious philosopher, but as a social theorist.
It is Halloween, and I want to talk to you about transgression.
When we visited Germany this summer, on our wandering extended exploration. Germany is a very ordered society, full of rules. There are signs everywhere telling you what is forbidden. We saw a sign forbidding us from blocking a driveway, that said: “Exit must be kept free.” Underneath it, somebody had scrawled in Sharpie: “Freedom For All Exits!”
This is how cultures work. Society sets boundries and norms, expectations and rules for us, and, for the most part, this is a good thing, and it keeps us all from killing each other on a daily basis. But to keep the all these norms from crushing us, we also need some rupture, a way of transgressing these norms and boundaries, and of letting off steam. There are rules, but then there is an undercurrent of freedom, where we express ourselves. In a healthy society, this can be done with humor, or with strange rituals.
Most societies have them: Ancient Greece had the Dionysian Rites, Ancient Rome had Saturnalia, where all the conventions were turned on their heads and the masters served the slaves. Evolving from this, the Roman Colonies in Britain retained the Twelfth Night Celebration, including Twelfth Night Follies where the men would dress like women and the women like men, and everybody would laugh and be silly (and sometimes learn something or be made uncomfortable by the gender roles they saw from a different side). Germany, where I grew up, celebrated the madness of Fasching before heading into Lent, as many cultures celebrate Mardi Gras.
The last remnant of this we have in the United States is Halloween, 
and even it is co-opted by fear of strangers and commercial interests and the consumerist desire to fill ourselves with candy or booze.
In a class I once taught, a student, a young romantic, suggested that all of us should go completely mad every once in a while. At the time, I was a bit put out by this, since I had an inkling of the pain mental illness can bring. Now, I understood madness better, having experienced a bit of it firsthand, and it can be terrifying.
However, I am convinced we do need a bit of safe madness, we do need to break free, to dress up and be someone else, to howl at the moon, to be a zombie and chase humans around, to pull pranks or jump out at people.
So celebrate this Halloween, but also keep it in your heart the rest of the year, and find little forms of transgression and rebelling that won’t hurt you or others.
Find some madness and ride it like a wild horse.
Take the time to dance the night away with abandon.
Sing out loud.
Pull a prank. Or two.
Make an inappropriate joke and shock someone.
Read Poetry out loud.
Howl at the moon.
We are all mad here.
Take a walk on the wild side.
Happy Halloween!
Enjoy your madness, but be kind to each other.
It’s very comforting to know that I am in the company of those who have also been touched by madness in their lives. Maybe that’s what makes me one of those who finds solice in my friends who also travel down the tracks with one wheel occasionally off . 🙂
Between my quirkiness, normalcy(if there is such a thing), and a very dark place where I find myself on occasion, I can keep most wheels on the track most of the time. Allowing transgressions of our norms is tricky. No one would want to go over the line. After all, when Halloween is over, howling at the moon is quite unacceptable. However, when I am with my grandchildren, there is a certain permission to sing and dance with them when they are small. Infants, toddlers, and preschoolers are into the thing we call “wild abandon”. Its their language, their fun, their way of being. Of course, there is a time when, “cool” takes over and the fun is different. We have to know when we can no longer be “wild” around them.
I worked with someone who became my dear friend. It was not rare when one of us could burst into song, get up from our desks and dance around, or just be terribly silly. After all, there we were, working in a closed part of the P.E. building as counselor and social worker out in the north 40 of an elementary school campus. “Wild”abandon could happen every once and a while and we didn’t have to worry that we would disturb anyone’s learning. I find it most important to take advantage of those times when “wild” abandon is possible !
I concur, social theory should address this more than lightly. There is nothing more important than “walking on the wild side” whenever we can !
I think two of the things that make one an adult are the ability to see oneself honestly and accept oneself for who one is without having to fear or pretend, and the ability to take responsibility for being kind to others.
Because of both of these, it seems to me that playing with children is one of the most adult things one can do.