Celebration is asserting itself in my neighborhood. The howls of Halloween are supplanting the clamor of politics. Even aesthetically it is a welcome change, the autumnal, harvest colors sit more easily in the landscape even here in Florida where the landscape's change is more subtle than many places. The most wonderful thing is that everyone enjoys the creation. Not all of us turn our front yards into comic horrors, but it seems that most of us are out taking walks and admiring the wild scenes of creeping terror, or the humorous moments of flattened witches. This silliness seems to be dissipating the contentiousness that was thick in the air. It reminds us that we are a neighborhood and we have many things in common. One of these is that we do Halloween in a big way and people come to see the wild and happy spectacle.

This seems to be a healing time after the political divide, even though it is before the election. There are still signs with Biden or Trump stuck in yards, but they are smaller and not quite so loud compared to the explosion of just flat out playfulness of Halloween decorations. Part of the universality of Halloween and some of its sister celebrations, like the more Latin Day of the Dead, is recognition of the mortality of the body. Not one of us has a body that will be useful forever. We are the human race, the Family of Man. This is a beautiful concept. It leads to greater understanding, starting close to home, neighborhood by neighborhood. What we have in common is deeper and older than what divides us. All over the world, and from many traditions, there are expressions of how we might, or should, treat one another. This expression of the Golden Rule is from The Way To Happiness by L. Ron Hubbard, "Try to treat others as you would want them to treat you." www.thewaytohappiness.org @waytohappinesstampa