Trick or treating is a truly magical experience. You get to dress up in a cute costume, have a nice evening stroll with your friends and take free candy from strangers. That’s literally the dream. But for some reason, once you reach a certain age people start to judge you when you go trick or treating. When I was just fourteen, I went trick or treating and every single house we stopped at told us we looked too old to be trick or treating, and I’m a very small person so it’s kind of hard to believe.
When I was younger there was always so much judgment over being interested in “childish” things like trick or treating, unironically listening to Hannah Montana or owning stuffed animals. Everybody would care so much about how others perceived them. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve stopped caring about what everybody thinks and learned to live my best life.
When I was a kid, I had this massive god complex. I thought I was so much better than everybody else. I remember thinking that because I knew my time’s tables I could become a world-renowned mathematician. Look at me now- I’m a music major. Anyway, it’s always so funny to see when kids get really cocky. A lot of the time they think that they’re the best at everything they do, but they haven’t seen or experienced so much of the world to even know what they don’t know. Over time, as you start to develop this thing called self-awareness, that’s when you realize that maybe you’re not better than everybody else and that hating on the Hannah Montana stans isn’t going to help you at all in life.
I used to act how I thought people perceived me. From a young age I was stereotyped as the “quiet, smart, science/math nerd,” and I was always afraid that if I broke away from this assumption that people would think I was weird or they would feed me to the sharks or something, I don’t know- but it felt like something bad would happen. Now I realize that I’m not that special. Everybody is so consumed in their own lives that they’re not going to care about what happens in yours. The only person observing your life under a microscope is yourself, and if somebody does care about how you live your life and judges you for it, then they need to chill- have a drink, go out for a walk, maybe do some yoga because that’s not a productive way to spend their time. So, make that change that you want in your life, because as long as you’re happy nothing else matters.
Trick or treating is a wonderful activity and whether you’re five, fifteen or even fifty, you should be able to go without experiencing or feeling any judgement. If anything’s going to stop you from trick or treating, let it be the virus going around and not the fear of being judged.