“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.”
— “The Velveteen Rabbit,”
Margery Williams Bianco
“The Velveteen Rabbit” is not a book I grew up with, but I find it precious nonetheless.
At its core, it’s a book about childhood itself — growing, learning, feeling, transitioning from one stage of life to another. It’s just told from a stuffed rabbit’s point of view, rather than a child’s.
And, as the quote above shows, it’s a story of love and its power.
I was struck by those words the first time I read them, and I am struck each time I see them in a quote-a-day calendar my mother gave me some years ago.
It always makes me think: How real would I be if someone had to love me to life? How real would my family and friends be if they needed my love to be real?
In a holiday season all about love, that surely bears some thought, especially in seemingly evil days — days in which white supremacy and nationalism, anti-immigrant and especially anti-Muslim sentiment, religious fundamentalism and factionalism and needlessly zero-sum political gamesmanship continue to rise.
Mississippi would seem on its face to be a loving place. This state consistently ranks as one of the most charitable in the nation in terms of per capita giving, and it is not called the Hospitality State for nothing.
Church congregations — in many places, but especially in Mississippi — come together for benefit programs for the needy among their number or in their communities. The casserole brigades swing into action for families in the midst of funeral planning and burials. Many offer a meal service or transportation for elderly and needy members.
Many businesses here chip in donations for good causes, whether monetary or in products, to support church or community programs, or even run their own programs for the benefit of an individual or an organization.
Yes, we are, all of us, generally a generous people.
And yet, we still somehow have such divisions between us. Racial ones, whether actual animus for people of different backgrounds or tangential subjects like the state flag and Confederate monuments.
Religious ones, based on familiar claims that all Muslims are terrorists; Jews collectively control money worldwide; Catholics aren’t real Christians; atheists can’t possibly be good people.
Political ones — conservative vs. liberal, projected on issues within and without the government’s sphere.
Even sports divide us. Actions during this year’s Battle for the Golden Egg led to nasty generalizations about fans of the opposing school as a class, rather than individual bad actors amid a wider mass of mostly pretty good people.
A sports mentality, in fact, could be our biggest problem. “My team is better than your team” has spilled into the rest of our lives. Politics is about winning, rather than compromising for mutual benefit and the greater good.
As researcher and speaker Brene Brown said in a much-viewed TED talk, religion doesn’t seem to be about exploring the mysteries of faith and finding comfort anymore, as much as saying, “I’m right, you’re wrong. Shut up.”
Regardless of our race, we’re all people. Being white doesn’t make anyone superior, being black doesn’t make anyone more athletic, being Asian doesn’t make anyone smarter.
Really listening to each other, really working together, really seeing who people are rather than who other people or groups would have you see them, would bring quite an improvement.
Disagree without being disagreeable. Love one another.
We all have real problems, real concerns, and we all need each other to find real solutions. How real can we be? How real could we make each other?
Get real, and be real.
