It doesn’t matter if you have a head, you must wear the right sort of hat. (Kazantzakis)
That’s why I keep my hat on, so my horns don’t show. (Ward Bond)
All hat, no cattle. (Unknown)
Halloween decorations are popping up around every corner. Actually a Celtic holiday on which people believed they needed masks or disguises or “hats” to protect themselves from evil spirits, today it’s an occasion for a rollicking good time.
If someone “wears many hats” it is usually assumed that they have many different roles or tasks to perform. A hat is like a mask, chosen and worn so that the “world” (the evil spirits of Celtic times??) sees us in a particular way instead of how we really are. Maybe one of our greatest fears is that if we show our true selves, other people won’t like us.
But you are the only personality, creativity, and spirit that is uniquely YOU. No one else can be that person. The irony is that we often wear a hat (whatever that may symbolically represent to you) to mask that part of ourselves and lose our greatest potential. And it’s exhausting to live an inauthentic life — how if you forget who you really are!
What would it be like to put on our “no hats,” and be exactly who we are. What then??