On becoming real.

If you've been reading this blog for quite some time, you must be familiar by now with my extreme love of reading (if not, go here and here).  Out of the hundreds books I've read in my life time, this excerpt from one of the best children's books ever written (in my opinion), "The Velveteen Rabbit" is simple, beautiful and brilliant. 

I find it to be interesting how the meaning of things change as you grow older, whether it's in music, movies or reading.  How you pick up the wisdom of the writer and the subtlety of something later on; the depth within the sentences or lyrics that you'd never fallen into in the past.

"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, 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 have to be carefully kept.

 Generally, by the time you are Real, your head 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."

-The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams Bianco

Have a wonderful day. :)