I Want To Be Real
Do you remember the game hide-and-seek? It’s one of my favorites! It’s a great game to play, not a good way to live. But it seems to me that since most of us hide. We don’t want people to see who we really are because we are convinced they won’t like us. Instead of being honest, we wear the masks of looks, performance or opinions. We are more concerned with keeping up appearances than being true to ourselves.
However, if we have the courage to be honest with ourselves then we can take off the masks and look into the mirror. Sometimes the reflection we behold startles us. We forgot what we looked like behind the masks. Somewhere along the way we lost our sense of self.
Laying down the masks, scary as it is, enables us to be real…to let ourselves know others and be known by others…to open ourselves up to love.
In the classic tale of The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams, two toys have a midnight discussion about what it means to be 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 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."
Despite the risk and the pain, I want to be real. How about you?
By Tamara