VELVETEEN RABBIT
by Margery Williams
(this starts at the point when the Skin Horse and the Rabbit are talking)
The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "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."
"Does 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 happen often 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 your 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."
"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.
"The Boy’s Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always."
“Get Real!”
Here in Gaia I have heard this – people demanding, coaxing, requesting, wishing for others to be Real.
What’s it mean? Following a few discussions it seemed that what it means is “Be Honest, Take Responsibility, Be a Mensch!”
I was reminded of a few concepts I am familiar with from the 12 Step Movement – Rigorous Honesty, Spiritual Awakening.
But that’s not something we can demand of people. It’s something that takes time, if it happens at all.
Some people never get there – they can’t seem to grasp even the smallest morsel of what it is. They skirt the issue entirely. Some get it fast – they reach out for it and embrace it in bounds and leaps – and most often we admire those people.
And yet some others approach this tentatively, slowly in small increments at an almost invisible pace. That is how it must be. For them.
Some talk high and low about it, but when asked to actually DISPLAY realness they turn out to be all talk and no walk. It’s disappointing when that happens, but it has to be ok, that too. Others don’t even have the concept in their vocabulary – yet when you meet them they exude Realness.
It is not something we can demand of people, because when all is said and done, it’s something that happens as a result of being loved to bits. All we can do, for those who have not yet found their Realness, for whatever reason, is compassionately love them by being as Real as we are capable of in our dealings with them and leave the rest to G-d.
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