Being Real About Being Fake

 

Real is an antonym for fake.  So if I tell you that I can be really fake, here’s a multiple choice question for you.  Choose the single best answer.  No, not all that apply.  Am I …

a)  simply stating an oxymoron
b)  being genuinely bogus
c)  being artificially authentic
d)  all of the above
e)  none of the above

Keep reading if you really want to know.  Read more if you don’t want to know but are willing to humour me, or maybe yourself, by make believing as if you want to know.  Hit the back button in your browser if you sincerely don’t care to know the answer.  Close the browser window if you for realsies want to know but for whatever reason you decide to not act on your true feelings.  Confused yet as to what to do?  Yeah, I think I’m getting confused too.

Okay, back to clear-cut easy to write and easy to read language …

 

Yes, I can be really fake and that’s the plain truth.

 

I was yesterday at the doctor’s office when I laughed at a joke by the old man sitting next to me.  I didn’t find it funny.  It wasn’t offensive or cruel or anything, I just didn’t find it anything to LOL about.  But I did anyway.  Why?  Because he was a nice man and I wanted to be nice back to him.  Who knows.  I may have been the only person who did respond to his sense of humour with a smile and a chuckle yesterday.  I’d rather be that person than all of the others who perhaps didn’t laugh.  I’d rather be genuinely nice than 100% genuine.  Tough choice to make but I do make it sometimes.  Not all roads paved with good intentions are heading towards hell.  Some of mine are directed towards heaven.  Or at least I try to direct them that way.  I hope my intentional GPS system worked.

I was also really fake not long after that doctor’s appointment.  I got some bad health news and was doing something I often try to do when I find myself in a challenging situation.  I was reciting a gratitude list in my head.  I was doing as I was taught.  Putting some ‘gr’ in my attitude.  As much as I love gratitude and try to express it as often as I can, sometimes I struggle with really feeling it.  I was struggling yesterday.  But I was also taught to act the way you want to feel.  And I truly wanted to feel grateful rather than feeling sorry for myself, fearful, and angry.  It eventually worked.  I found those few things in my life I had a no-holds barred level of love and appreciation for and meditated on just them.  Those thoughts overpowered the other not-so thankful thoughts and off I went with my day.

Now if you were to ask those closest to me, my family and my friends and my coworkers, they’d probably all tell you I’m a pretty darn honest and genuine person.  They would say things like that I speak the truth and I speak my truth.  That I say what I mean and I mean what I say.  That I tell it like it is.  And most of the time, they are 100% correct.  But they will also tell you that I’m not perfect.  That I am flawed and have defects of character.  That I am human.  And choosing ‘all of the above’ to those latter three statements on a multiple choice quiz about me would grant them a 100% passing score.

My antics of yesterday are just two examples of how I can be really fake.  Am I proud to admit it to you all?  Not particularly.  But I think a few other life lesson’s I’ve been taught apply to my school of thought in sharing that with you.  One is that I learn from my shortcomings, my quote-un-quote failures, my actions.  I have learned from writing this.  The other is that while I’m a huge fan of perfection, I am more so a fan of accepting that I am perfectly imperfect.  I am perfuctly fecked up as I’ve told you before.  And composing this post reminded me of that.  I need those kind of post-it note reminders.  And finally, a life lesson that has become one of my mantras:  spiritual progress, not spiritual perfection.  ‘Nuff said if I do say so myself.

 

So what’s the damn answer to the question then???

Oh yeah, that lure you in make you wanna read more question I threw in at the beginning.  Well, if you were allowed to choose more than one response, which you weren’t by the way, then a) might have been included as right at least on literary technical grounds to some.  But the proper answer is e) none of the above.  I can be really fake.  And that’s the truth.  I am getting down to getting real about myself with you.  I am real.  And part of my realness is being fake sometimes.  It is what it is.  And despite the critics who will say how awful it is to be fake, sometimes that is what I am.

I’ll end with Gloria Gaynor’s song that “lets” that be okay for me.  Not that I need anyone to give me permission though of course.

Life’s not worth a damn, ’til you can say I am what I am
Your life is a sham, ’til you can shout out I am what I am

 

 

Image source:   geralt user on pixabay.com, CC0 Public Domain

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Listen to music.  It could save your soul.  Be kind.  It could save someone’s world.  Wear a hat.  It could save your life.