Passion
Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash
Oct. 28, 2024
We are all searching for a sense of purpose and direction. I spent a long time believing that there was a point where everything would snap into focus, where the disjointed pieces would click into place and form a coherent whole. I used to think there would be a moment when the path would become apparent. I found that moment. I know the exact day, place, and time. It was October 31, 1983. I was nine years old and standing at the bottom of our driveway, dressed in a bathrobe and holding a large stick that I believed to be a lightsaber. My purpose was to train Jedi and get candy. This quest would lead down many cul-de-sacs. Sure, older kids might try to scare me. But unlike them, I had the Force, the Holy Spirit, dental floss, and a stick.
Most people didn’t see “the Jedi” in my costume. To many parents, I looked dressed as “Bathrobe Boy with a Stick.”
“What are you, little man?”
“I’m a Jedi.”
“Oh yeah, the thing with the thing from the star movie.”
I could hear them mumbling as they closed their doors, “You know, the Bryant boy, he’s weird.” Let’s stipulate the weirdness now. That’s a given. Perhaps the truth is that I was both the stick boy and a Jedi. Life is a series of revisions and compilations, each version building on the last but never quite finished. It could be that knowing who you want to be is less about finding certainty and more about making peace with ambiguity.
A Young Jedi
AI Image Courtesy of Richard Bryant
When you’re a kid, Halloween isn’t about scaring people or eating until you’re sick, even though those are the marketed highlights. It’s not about dodging that creepy house with the motion-activated witch that makes you scream like a baby. Halloween is about transformation. It’s about taking the ordinary—your best friend’s house, the front yard, that cooker-cutter subdivision—and turning them into something exciting for one night. It’s about believing that anything is possible because, on Halloween, the world bends just a little.
I remember standing there, pillowcase in hand, shuffling up to the front doors, and the streetlights buzzing overhead. The air was crisp, full of leaves and possibility. You could be anything—Batman, a pirate, a Jedi—and people would accept it, hand you candy as if to say, “Tonight, you are what you say you are, and I believe you.”
The best part was the walk back home when the night was winding down. You’d have a pillowcase full of candy that felt impossibly heavy for someone your size, and you’d look at the faces of those you’d spent the night with. You’d think about how they were just the kids you knew from school or who lived down the street. But tonight, you were a ragtag band of heroes, all with the same mission—to collect as much proof of your adventures as possible.
And as you walked, you’d start to see the real neighborhood re-emerge—the porch lights turned off, the lawn pumpkins deflating, and the magic fading. But you’d feel this warmth spread through your chest and think: This is what it means to belong.
The candy was nice. Yes, the costumes were incredible. But really, it was when you looked at the people around you, and they looked back, that you all knew you had made something out of nothing. It was proof that you were part of something bigger than yourself, a collective adventure that, for one night, made you feel larger than life.