The Velveteen Rabbit

"Once you are real, you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always." We all pretend from time to time. Driven by a desire to create or maintain a certain image, we pretend to be more or different than who we actually are. We seem more interested in pretending to live interesting lives than actually living interesting lives. One hundred years ago, Margery Williams saw the human condition so clearly that her story, The Velveteen Rabbit, has been embraced more with every passing generation. Perhaps that is because our need to become real has grown greater with each year. Anyone or anything that prevents you from becoming real is simply too small for you. There is one question the little rabbit doesn't ask the skin horse that seems ever-present in the human consciousness: How do we know when we have become real? You have become real when you realize that you are enough.

"Once you are real, you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always." We all pretend from time to time. Driven by a desire to create or maintain a certain image, we pretend to be more or different than who we actually are. We seem more interested in pretending to live interesting lives than actually living interesting lives. One hundred years ago, Margery Williams saw the human condition so clearly that her story, The Velveteen Rabbit, has been embraced more with every passing generation. Perhaps that is because our need to become real has grown greater with each year. Anyone or anything that prevents you from becoming real is simply too small for you. There is one question the little rabbit doesn't ask the skin horse that seems ever-present in the human consciousness: How do we know when we have become real? You have become real when you realize that you are enough.

Margery Williams Bianco was a popular children's book author who achieved lasting fame with the 1922 publication of the classic, The Velveteen Rabbit. She was forty-one at the time of its publication.