Love is...Authentic

            It won’t be a long piece this week. Nothing well thought out or contrived. Just a short blurb about something which brought a smile too my face. In truth, I spent some time writing out my thoughts. Ranting a bit about a mild existential crisis I have been having as of late. AI and what it has in store for our future. Ugg. However, I kept pressing backspace and delete. Everything I was saying seemed contrary to that which I wanted to get out. And so, here I am starting again. Simple and to the point.

            Late last week, Rachel sent me an old video of Siaya that had me smiling the whole day. It tickled me so much that I set out on a mission to find a similar video of Onan. (Okay. It wasn’t really a mission. I just asked my sister-in-law to send me the video as I knew it was stored on her phone.) The clips were both made by my kids when they were about the same age. They both secretly borrowed someone’s phone and recorded themselves either singing or dancing. They weren’t performing for Rachel, me, or anyone else for that matter. They had no intention of posting anything. I don’t even think they cared if anyone watched it. They simply hit record as a whimsical way to express what they were feeling at the time. Maybe it was to preserve that moment for themselves. Who knows? But then again, I don’t really care. To me, it is an authentic look at who my kids were and will forever be.

          As we move further and further into the age of technology, we seem to be losing our sense of authenticity. Filters and photoshop, fake news and disinformation, trolling and manipulation. These are all so prevalent in our daily lives that it is difficult to discern fiction from reality. And that is why these moments are so precious to me. They remind me that authenticity still exists. We might need to dig a little to find it. But it is still there. For now.

Love is…authentic.