"What Is Real?"

I just finished watching the movie Beginners starring Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer, a story between a father and his son, and their relationship when the father came out of the closet, at 75 years old to his son and got afflicted with lung cancer. It is a slow paced movie but very endearing, and the undelying theme about sadness, pain, acceptance, tolerance and of course love, it's effects and consequences and eventually how to survive the feeling. One part that struck me was when Ewan relates an excerpt from a children's book called the Velveteen Rabbit by Margaret Williams about a stuffed toy rabbit wanting to be played with and loved by a boy which had a very deep meaning, I kept rewinding and playing the narration until I got up and searched the internet about it. I found the excerpt and here it goes:

"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 story goes on that the Velveteen Rabbit does become real because he is so loved by the boy. To cut it short, the story reminds us that when we are truly ourselves and truly loved we become genuine and real.

If I asked you, I am sure you would say that you unconditionally love those close to you, your partners, your friends your family. And I am sure in general we do unconditionally love those close to us. However, the test comes from day to day, in the annoying habits and the frustrating ways of being human. Most often, in the day to day monotony of our relationships we are taking account of who has done more, who calls more, who initiates more, who has sacrificed more. We get stuck in the ego of self protection. We don't love with a reckless abandon. We don't look at our partner or friends with appreciation and joy for the daily contributions they make into our lives. I know how difficult it is to really let go and LOVE someone for their REALNESS yet that is what we all long for, someone to take us in and look at our ugliness and love it anyway.

So today, my challenge to you, as you interact with those close to you, love them for who they are, for their failures and their successes for their hits and misses. Love them like the little boy loved the Velveteen Rabbit.