When Fake Becomes Real

There is a bouquet of paper flowers on my desk. They were made at school, given to me on Father’s Day this year, handed over with the words “I love you.” They are not real flowers. They are also the only flowers I have ever been given that are still here.

The whole article in three sentences. Real flowers wither; the paper ones on my desk will outlast every bouquet I have ever received, because what makes a thing real is not what it is made of but how much love has been poured into it. The same is true of our children — and of the connection we want them to have with the Guru. Which means my job is less about making them into the finished thing I have pictured, and more about loving them, guiding them, and then getting out of the way of what love and the Guru’s blessing can do.

The thought that arrived uninvited

I remember thinking, quite plainly: real flowers would have died by now. These will still be here next year.

And then a second thought, which is the one that actually rearranged me. Which of those is the fake one?

A colleague recommended The Velveteen Rabbit to me a long time ago. When I finally read it, I did not expect to feel much. It is a short children’s book from 1922 about a stuffed toy. I felt a great deal.

It is the Skin Horse who does it. The old, shabby toy in the nursery, explaining to the new rabbit what Real means:

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

And later, the part I could not get past:

“Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

Looking at the paper flowers, I thought of the Skin Horse immediately. Not because the flowers are shabby — they are, honestly, quite good. Because the same rule was operating in both places. Real is not a material. Real is what love does to a thing over time.

The part where I do not come out well

Here is my confession, and it is not a flattering one.

I sort. It is almost involuntary. I look at a thing, or a situation, or a person, and within a few seconds I have filed it: this is the real version, that one is not. This person will get there, that one probably will not. This effort counts, that one is a nice try.

I carry biases I did not consciously choose and assumptions I formed long before I had the information to form them. And the uncomfortable truth is that I do this to my own children. Not out loud, and not cruelly — but I have a picture in my head of the finished version of each of them, and I catch myself measuring the child in front of me against a picture they never agreed to.

That is what the paper flowers did to me. Because by every standard I habitually apply, they are the fake ones. And they are the ones that lasted. My sorting was wrong at the exact moment I was most confident in it.

What Gurbani says about a father looking at a flawed child

I want to be careful here, because it would be easy to turn this into a soft sentiment. Gurbani is not soft about it. It is specific.

ਸੁਤੁ ਖਿਨੁ ਖਿਨੁ ਭੂਲਿ ਬਿਗਾਰਿ ਜਗਤ ਪਿਤ ਭਾਵਹਿਗੇ ॥੧॥

Your child makes mistakes again and again, but still, You are pleased with him, O Father of the Universe. ||1||

— Guru Raam Daas Ji, Ang 1321

The mistakes are not overlooked, minimised, or explained away. They are named — again and again — and the pleasure of the Father is not conditional on them stopping. That is the model of fatherhood we are handed. Not approval that switches on when the child finally matches the picture.

And then there is the question of change, which is where my sorting habit does the most damage. If I decide in advance who someone is, I have quietly declared that transformation is not available to them. Gurbani will not let that stand:

ਮਨੂਰੈ ਤੇ ਕੰਚਨ ਭਏ ਭਾਈ ਗੁਰੁ ਪਾਰਸੁ ਮੇਲਿ ਮਿਲਾਇ ॥

I have been transformed from rusty iron into gold, O Siblings of Destiny, united in Union with the Guru, the Philosopher’s Stone.

— Guru Amar Daas Ji, Ang 638

Rusty iron. Not promising iron, not iron with potential. The scrap you would have thrown out. That is the raw material the Guru works with, and it is the reason my confident assessments of who will and will not “get there” are worth so little.

So what do I actually do differently

Nothing dramatic. Four things, and they are all small.

I keep the imperfect thing where I can see it. The flowers stay on the desk. Not as decoration — as a correction. They are there specifically to remind me that my instinct about what is real was wrong.

I praise the thing that was actually done, not the gap between it and the better version. This is harder than it sounds. The reflex to add “next time you could…” is strong, and most of the time it serves me, not them.

I hold the verdict. When I notice myself concluding something about one of my children — how they will turn out, what they are and are not good at, what they will care about at twenty — I try to notice that it is a guess wearing the costume of a fact.

I ask, rather than engineer. I cannot manufacture my children’s connection with the Guru. I can put them near it, keep it in the house, live it in front of them, and then ask for the blessing that they build their own. Their connection has to be theirs, not a copy of mine on loan.

That last one is the one I most want to get right and am least in control of. Which is, I suspect, the point.

The honest limits

I am describing a shift in how I am looking at things, not a technique with a result attached. I have not stopped sorting; I have started catching myself sorting, which is a much smaller achievement than it sounds. Ask me next year whether it held.

What I keep coming back to

The bouquet cost nothing. It will not wither, wilt, or need water. Its whole value is that someone made it with their hands and meant it.

I think that is what I want for my children too. Not the polished, finished version I once pictured — just that they are loved for long enough, and gently enough, that they become real. Worn soft in the places that love reaches. Held by us, and blessed by the Guru, and beautiful in a way that only the people who truly know them will be able to see.

And if you are tired, or wondering whether any of this is working with your own children — that is not a sign you are doing it wrong. It takes a long time. Nothing looks finished while you are still in the middle of it.

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Is there something one of your children made that you have never quite been able to put away? I would love to hear what it is, and where it lives in your house. Reply to this, or leave a comment — I read every one.

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