Good and Counterfeit Money

Back in the day when only cash was used…

Bank tellers were trained in a very simple manner – learn what the real money looks, feels, and smells like and you’ll recognize counterfeit immediately.

This simple method works in many other areas.

Take a bite and chew the sweetness of an organic apple. Yum! Bite into a pesticide sprayed apple and experience the bitter taste on the skin. You’ll see.

Eat a slice of homemade cake using your own flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. True flavor! Premade and box mixes have the customary smell and bitter flavor of the BHA and BHTs added for preservation.

Real vanilla extract does not smell or taste like imitation vanilla flavoring.

Tempered solid steel tools, nuts, bolts and screws won’t break into pieces or lose their shape when the craftsman uses them. Imitation metals will and can be dangerous to use.

Even ideologies, philosophies, religions need to come under the counterfeit test…the test of histories past, civilizations won and lost, good and bad outcomes.

We are responsible to train ourselves to recognize right vs wrong, good vs. bad, healthy vs unhealthy. This comes through reading and learning from the past, studying and observation of events and peoples today, and thinking through what the future might look like depending on which is chosen.

We have been given a good brain. Let’s train it, use it, keep it sharp!

Decide not to let others do your thinking. Teach yourself. Learn. With practice, we will come to recognize good intentions and bad intentions even within ourselves.

Grow and see how much good you really do have to offer.

It’s there!

Art

We all have art in us. We are all craftsmen, artsmen, artists, if you will, of one or many things.

We all have a desire, a bent to make or do something. There is something that peaks our interest…working with numbers, working with fabric, wood, metal, designing roads and cities, buildings, designing computers and software; working on cars, assembling items, organization of anything. I believe it is an art to know how to clean and decorate a home!

There are a myriad of types of art besides drawing, painting, or sculpting.

Our art…your art, is needful.

I grew up thinking ‘art’ was only for a chosen few that were crafty, and really crafty didn’t ‘qualify’ as art back then. Art was Rembrandt and Michelangelo and Picasso and Renoir.

Art was something beautiful that others could make but you could not. It was made by people you did not know and never would.

Artists were poor, yet driven, and in their time were thought a bit odd and eccentric, but later on their work was magnified and they were seen in a different light.

The challenge is to discover what our art is and to get in the groove and play it.

Our art will be something we are good at, or would like to become good at, it is something we look forward to doing and gives us pleasure as we work on it –awaiting the finished result.

If it is a drudgery to do or even think about doing, it probably isn’t your art, it is someone else’s.

Never fear, you have your own good skills to develop and share with others. Yours will be different but it will be yours, uniquely yours.

Erwin McManus said, “Don’t be the best imitation of someone else’s talent.”

Wouldn’t the world be uninteresting if everyone’s art looked the same?

What makes genuine art so very costly is that it is irreproducible. It did not come off an assembly line; it is different every time.

What is your art?