Brain Food #804: Learning to be real
The Velveteen Rabbit, Or How Toys Become Real
Thoughts of the day
I recently read the children’s book The Velveteen Rabbit, which turned 100 this year. It is not a Christmas tale, but it starts on Christmas morning, and so it felt like a suitable story to share at this time of the year when self-reflection begins to enter our minds, while many of us will also seek to make meaningful gifts to loved ones.
The book follows the story of a stuffed rabbit, gifted to a boy on Christmas day. The boy plays with him for two hours, but the rabbit is then quickly forgotten as the boy gets distracted by more modern toys. Throughout the tale, the rabbit longs to be real, disliking how it is made. But it continues to disintegrate, suffering from the wear and tear of time, experience, and rejection.
In one scene, it encounters the Skin Horse, the oldest toy in the nursery. The Horse shares its wisdom:
“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.”
The tale is a story of change, acceptance, love, and ultimately about learning to be real, especially when knowing that to be so, you must also be open to pain. Ultimately, love can be real only if its subjects are ready to be real. Being ‘real’ carries multiple meanings: to be authentic, to be present, to be an adult, and to be vulnerable.
The cause of the rabbit’s suffering is its own imperfections, but as it goes with humanity, it is thanks to those imperfections that we become who we are meant to be, and take our place in the world.
On a different note, from the Brain Food archives, read why football is the ballet of the masses.
Have a great week.
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