The Fake Baby

Recently I was online looking for something that I can’t remember for the life of me. Somehow I came across a picture of this beautiful sleeping baby girl about two months old. She was just unbelievably gorgeous.

I clicked on the picture and admired her golden blonde hair with the cute little pink bow in it. I gazed at her peaceful sleeping face; her long eyelashes and barely noticeable white blonde eyebrows. Her deliciously chunky cheeks and chins called out to me to kiss them. And, oy, those plump little pouty lips! Her face was nothing short of angelic.

Throughout the day, the image of this gorgeous baby stuck in my mind. She reminded me of my third son, who really was the perfect baby. He was chunky. He had rolls and rolls on his fat little legs. He had like, six chins. He had two dimples on his cheeks that looked like he was hiding my favorite rugelach in them. His eyes were as blue as the sky. And his hair – platinum blonde, and lots of it! Oh, how I used to just spend hours staring at his beauty!

And then, of course, I would look over at my husband and wonder how in the world such a gorgeous child came from him. In fact, I still ask him the same question to this day. It’s one of those unsolvable mysteries in my mind. Can I take full credit for my kids’ beauty? Okay, I’ll settle for half, and the other half I’ll give to Hashem, because He is a partner in creating children, after all. Hubby, on the other hand, well… I’m really not sure what he had to do with anything.

Oh, yeah, so back to this little baby girl. I sent the picture to a friend, who was so amazed by it that she posted it online. Later in the day, she sent me this message telling me that the baby is actually a doll. What? I was shocked and, for some reason, devastated. What a gorgeous baby! How in the world could she not be real??

Being slightly stubborn, I insisted that my friend was mistaken. “Look at those lips!” I told her. “There’s no way they can be fake!” In the end, she finally had to get someone else to tell me that I was wro..wr…wrong. Yuck. I get the creeps every time I write that word.

So you know I’ve got to pull a message out of this, right? And now you’re gonna read it.

We always hear from many Jewish sources that life on this Earth is all an illusion. What looks good is bad, what looks bad is good, everything is really good in the big picture, and in the end, none of this reality even exists. Well, that’s just so uplifting.

What looked so real to me, so utterly convincing, was a complete lie. I fell for the illusion, 100%. Even when I was told that she wasn’t real, I couldn’t bring myself to let go of that illusion so easily.

Don’t we behave the same way in life? When we see beautiful things, like a fancy car, a luxurious house, someone else’s glamorous life that we wish we had, do we believe that these things won’t bring us lasting happiness? Or do we insist on holding on to the illusion that if we were to just make some more money so we can buy that kind of life, everything would be fantastic?

And what about when we go through extremely difficult times? What part of us really believes that the challenge is an illusion, and that it’s actually a good thing?

We go through life so stuck in the fake materialism, that it’s almost impossible to see the spiritual reality. So how can we fix this? Simple – the more we disconnect from our physical desires for nicer stuff, the more we’ll connect with the spiritual world of Truth. And that world is the only place we’ll find genuine, lasting happiness. Moral? Don’t be fooled by fake babies.

You know, I just had a genius idea! Maybe I’ll buy myself one, just so I can hold it whenever I feel like holding a little baby! And then when I’ve had enough, I’ll throw it back into the closet so I won’t hear its annoying fake cries. I think I’m going to add “Mother of the Year” to my resume. Seriously!