Spooky Stuff
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As the days get shorter now, and the nights get longer, a different feeling
comes over you. It's autumn and something's changing in the air. Cold
breezes surround you, nighttime seems to last forever, and you want to stay
inside more. It's the right atmosphere to be scared.
Halloween is a time to accept this time of year, be scared, and laugh along with it. Kids run around dressed up as scary things and collect candy doing it. It's a fun time but it's also a time to acknowledge it's natural to be scared. We're all scared from time to time. When I asked a friend at Opportunity Village what scares her, she said: "I get scared when I hear...a scary monster in the pantry and he sticks his hand out far of the pantry and then I walk in the pantry and I can see the toaster moving, the wax paper moving, the foil moving and everything else moving just bouncing up and down and shaking like a earthquake in the pantry and this is scary." As with my friend, the unknown scares us. That's why darkness scares us - we don't know what's out there. Autumn cold reminds us of the chill that we feel when we're scared. Sometimes it comes in the form of a storm: Here's what Edgar Allen Poe writes in his poem, A Descent into the Maelstrom: "We were now in the belt of the surf that always surrounds the whirl, and I thought that another moment would plunge us into the abyss..." Sometimes it comes in the form of a monster: Here's what Mary Shelley writes in her novel Frankenstein: "... was a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes... I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs." Enjoy this scary time of year. Only by laughing at the spooky stuff can we really know how good it feels to feel good. |
Jim Holcombe
Marion, IA