For the Love of All Things Genuine

It’s time to get back to the real things

Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things. — (Psalm 119:37, ESV)

Some time ago, I was perusing items at a garage sale that featured mostly gently used baby items. I didn’t need baby items but something caught my eye.

The slightly used store-bought comforter set was wrapped up in plastic with a hefty price tag of $150.00. Tossed to the side of that was a small baby quilt hand-stitched with Winnie the Pooh characters made from scraps of material and clothing. It was priced at $2.00.

My hand instinctively reached for the hand-stitched quilt when the woman said, “Oh, my grandma made that, you can have it for a buck.” What would you have done? Yes, I snatched it for a buck!

Taking that made-with-love quilt home made me feel like I had placed value on the love her grandmother had sewn into that quilt. I never had the chance to have a grandmother sew (or sow) anything into my life because I lost one when I was a baby and the other was lost to our family in a different way.

If my grandmother hand stitched this for my baby, I’d never let it go — not for a million dollars, I thought.

Rescuing handmade items is something I often do. It’s my way of showing value to something others have discarded and to the person who made it. It corresponds with a penchant I have for seeking out genuine things. I’ve always been turned off by inauthenticity — from products to personalities.

I am sure we all crave the real thing, the genuine product, not a knock-off or substitute. But we have to know what the real thing is before we can identify the fake. When bank tellers are in training they don’t study counterfeit bills, they study real bills. When they know what an authentic $50 dollar bill looks like they can spot any fake.

Maybe society’s inability to spot inauthentic items and lack of appreciation for the real thing is a direct result of our fast-paced lives. We can’t take time to dig deep, to search for the real thing, or to wait for it if producing it takes a while.

We have settled for instant gratification — a burger that is fast and cheap but we question if it’s genuinely a real meat pattie. Shudder, don’t think too long about it — do we really want to know the truth? — just scarf it down and keep going.

Our consumer-driven diet for fast and cheap has resulted in inauthentic and fake. Does this bother you as much as it bothers me?

And why is it so hard to find genuine things? My daily Facebook feed is loaded with ads for clothing, bags, shoes, investments, coaching — I can’t decipher what’s worth my attention and money and what’s just another fake attempt to get me to part with cash from my bank account.

Fake news, scam emails, phishing, fake friends, airbrushed photos, touched up images, doctored data, half-truths, click-bait headlines…we are surrounded by the fake and inauthentic. Don’t you crave something real, something genuine about now?

For the love of all things genuine, I offer you this starter list and invite you to add to it. Let the words evoke sights, scents, and memories. Make a list of items that you will no longer settle for fake substitutes. Begin your journey back to the real thing.

Pure honey

After keeping bees for a couple of years, I can assure you there is a difference between honey straight from the hive and honey doctored up and sold in stores. I can also tell you that when bees are allowed to collect from nature’s offerings the honey is distinct and flavorful versus bees that are fed a steady diet of sugar water.

Maple syrup

It’s worth the price, people! Just do it!

100% cotton (organic to boot)

I have some socks that have lasted me almost a decade made from organic cotton. They are soft and stay put. Invest now, save later! It’s time to start paying attention to what we put on our bodies as much as what we put in our bodies.

Natural hair color

Blondes want to be grey and silver-headed women want to be blonde again, brunettes lighten and color — only her hairdresser knows for sure! As for me, I’ve decided to let nature do what she does best. I now have young girls asking me where I get my hair “done.” It’s all me, baby, and I love it!

Heirloom fruits and vegetables

The other day my husband brought home Idaho potatoes for baking. I refuse to use them. They rank up there with the Red “Delicious” (that’s using the word lightly) apple that has been bred for mass consumption but not flavor or texture. Gag! Give me some potatoes fresh from the soil or an apple that nobody recognizes.

We are destroying diversity in our food by creating fruits and vegetables for mass production. If you’re planting a garden, you can buy heirloom seeds for a tad bit more and avoid the genetically modified seeds. Check out these seed catalogs and visit your local garden center for heirloom tomato plants and more. You will appreciate the genuine difference!

Heirloom flowers

Earth laughs in flowers. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

I will wax nostalgic here for a moment. I once had an heirloom garden full of plants donated from my mother. These plants were taken from her garden of heirloom flowers that had been growing for decades: phlox, peonies, columbine, iris, hydrangea, and lilac graced my yard from early spring to late summer, evoking the same images and scents I grew up loving.

There are hybridized versions of plants and flowering bushes now, bred to bloom longer or showcase larger blooms, but something gets lost when we tinker. The longer blooming lilac bush loses its perfume-like scent and becomes just another pretty bush. I think the lesson here is that some things are perfect just the way they are — including you, too!

Chewing gum

Buy some gum today and you get more than what you bargained for. Preservatives, synthetic flavoring, and fake sugar substitutes — some that even come with a health warning for people and dogs. Chewing gum shouldn’t be that complicated. There are a few places — like specialty candy shops — where you can get old-fashioned chewing gum like Black Jack, Clove, and Beemans. BlackJack tastes like licorice with anise flavoring, Clove tastes like — you guessed it — clove, and Beemans is a chewing gum made famous by pioneering test pilot Chuck Yeager who chewed it before every flight for good luck.

Gardens

I don’t like formal gardens. I like wild nature. It’s just the wilderness instinct in me, I guess. — Walt Disney

I’m bored with the immaculately landscaped yards I see on my daily walk. The designer plants mass-produced for cheap sale and easy maintenance in new developments. Won’t somebody just let their garden go wild and let the butterflies and bees rejoice? Show me a good old-fashioned English garden where things are a little untamed.

God

God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. — (John 4:24, NKJV)

In our society, God is also a commodity to be bought and sold. And most often it’s not the real thing. Religion is not God. Feeling good about life is not God. Self-help books are not God. I won’t attempt to define God for you, but I can tell you this: He can’t be bought in a box, summarized in ten chapters, or even sold at the local church. God is Spirit. Why would we want to cheapen and imitate that?

Friends

The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.– Elisabeth Foley

Over the years, I’ve loosened my definition of a friend to include different types of friends. Like fruit, there are varieties of friends: friends for a season, friends of friends, friends for having fun with, and then those friends that know you. Still, I find that the word, like love and God, is too casually thrown around and many who I believed to be friends turned out to be acquaintances or coworkers who were only interested in a relationship with me as long as it benefited them in some way. I know who my genuine friends are — substitutes need not apply.

Your voice

You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.— Anne Lamott

It can be hard to find your genuine voice — especially when starting out as a writer — I relate to that. Fear of what others will think if we speak our truth, fear of uncovering our truth, worries over how others will perceive us, and the influence of those we look up to are all factors that can alter our voice.

It takes time and honesty to find your voice. Practice, step out but never stop seeking and evolving. It’s what readers and potential friends will connect to. And remember, if you don’t define your voice, someone else will!

Children’s thoughts and creativity

All children are born artists, the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. — Pablo Picasso.

I used to teach Sunday school so I chuckle every time I remember this story. The Sunday school teacher asked her class, “What’s brown with a fuzzy tail and buries nuts?”

One child tentatively raised his hand and said, “I think it’s a squirrel but I am going to say, Jesus.”

If we are not careful we can shut down children. We can tame them, take their wildness and creativity away.

Let’s give them room to be genuine: make their own artwork, not cookie-cutter “art” projects so our bulletin boards look nice; give them blank paper and let them use their own voice not response questions that imply one answer is the right one; teach them to explore but don’t tell them what to find; allow playtime to be playtime not structured activities — children know how to play — we don’t have to give them guidelines and frameworks.

It takes some time to navigate through the slush to find what’s worth our time and money but I hope you’ll take this challenge forth, because as Abraham Lincoln once said, “Whatever you are, be a good one.”