What is real?

Many moons ago I bought a boxed set of The Velveteen Rabbit for my daughter Angela. It was Christmas. There was still a small shopping center with a book store near my house. I've been going crazy trying to remember the name of that store, but it hasn't come to me. The boxed set had a small rabbit and a book. We've still got the rabbit.

Knowing that I was missing the book, my daughter Mia bought me a beautiful edition of it and I've carried it to speaking engagements with me to read this passage. Thought I'd share it with you as a holiday greeting. You don't need to have been out shopping for toys to appreciate it.

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day…. Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“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.”

“Doest it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. 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.”

Quote from The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams.