Fake as a Faux Fur Throw

The label clearly stated the fake: Faux Fur Throw, a gift that Keith and I received for Christmas. The throw made no apologies for being man-made, synthetic, and artificial, pseudo, simulated, a mock blanket. Not genuine. And one of the most comfortable throw-blankets we’ve ever owned. The weightiness, sheer softness, vibrant color, warmth.

Yes, I must watch out for fakes, especially when they try to fool me by passing themselves off as the real thing. But sometimes “fake” is exactly what I want.

Fake as a first-half-of-life person

Richard Rohr describes the task of the first half of life as “establishing an identity, a home, relationships, friends, community, security, and building a proper platform for our only life.” In some ways, our external “container” is fake, a copy, an imitation, a lookalike, a likeness based on what we see in others and incorporate into ourselves. We become counterfeits.

Back in 2012, I wrote: “When Shaun Underhill became the newly appointed principal of Ursuline Academy of Dallas in the mid-nineties and addressed the faculty, she noted that learning a job was like putting on a new hat and playing the role. In some ways, she told us, it was like faking it until everything from appearance to words and actions helped us become what the job required. It took time to grow into each role, to develop from fake to authentic, to cultivate a positive attitude as a student, a teacher, an administrator or even a parent.”

Likely she had read this quote from C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity: “Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already.” In other words, fake it. 

Fake as a second-half-of-life person

This past weekend, nearly 50 women across the country and the world participated in an online workshop titled “Writing Your Next Chapter,” offered by The Sage Forum. All of us were well into the second half of life and searching for the contents that our ego containers were meant to hold. Reaching beyond the not genuine counterfeit and eschewing the feigning, copying, and replicating of others from the first half of our lives. 

Or as Rohr states, in the second half of life “…the container itself has to stretch, die in its present form, or even replace itself with something better.” 

From man-made fake to genuine forged by God, grace edges us forward.

Linkup with Five Minute Friday: https://fiveminutefriday.com/2023/01/26/fmf-writing-prompt-link-up-fake/