What Is Real

"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 all 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."
  
     The previous is an exerpt from one of my favorite children's books, The Velveteen Rabbit. There is true wisdom in the words, an analogy of life. The story speaks to my heart. You have to go through the deep to gain wisdom in life. The rabbit longed with his whole heart to be real, for a time he had everything he wanted, but he still was not real, but he was becoming. He would come to be real after the worst thing happened, he was discarded and put out. Out of his misery a tear fell, out of the tear a flower grew and a fairy came out of the flower to give the bunny his ultimate goal, the transformation became complete, he was real. He hopped back to his old stomping grounds one day, the boy saw him and was reminded of that old bunny he had loved. The bunny couldn't stay, he couldn't return to the previous state for he had truly become real.
     That's the way life is, circumstances change you, hopefully for the ultimate goal. What makes you real? Love makes me real, love changes me. It turns my heart towards compassion. It turns my heart toward understanding. It turns me away from judgment, it turns me away from hate.
     As the words to a song I love says, it's like sunlight burning at midnight, making my life something so beautiful. Midnight could be the darkest time, but there are treasures hidden in darkness, a treasure will shine, much more so in the dark.