BECOMING REAL

What is it about becoming real? read on......

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the
others. He was so old and most of the hairs in his tail had been
pulled out to string bead necklaces. For nursery magic is very
strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and
wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

"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 your 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."

from The Velveteen Rabbit

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/williams/rabbit/rabbit.html
by Margery Williams; illustration by William Nicholson