What is real?

In the book "The Velveteen Rabbit," Margery William's define real/love like this. ’What is REAL?’ asked the Rabbit one day. ’Does it mean having that buzz inside of you, and a stick-out handle?’ ’REAL isn’t how you were made,’ said the Skin Horse. ’It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a 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 often happen 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... Once you are REAL, you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.’

Love makes us real; otherwise, we remain just a fantasy, a dream, with no substance in it. Love gives us substance, love gives us integrity, loves makes us centered. We should not avoid love. We need to go through it, with all its pains. Yes, it hurts, but if we are in love it doesn’t matter. In fact, all those hurts strengthen us. Sometimes it really hurts badly, terribly, but all those wounds are necessary to provoke us, to challenge us, to make us alert. We need to take its challenges, accept its dangers, it hurts, wounds. We need to go through it. When it comes to the real thing, there are no short-cuts.  It is a struggle, it is arduous, it is an uphill task, but that is how one reaches the peak. And the joy will be more, far more, than if you were dropped on the peak by some kind of magic because we will have reached the peak, unprepared; we will not be able to enjoy it. It is so dangerous – every possibility of never reaching to the peak; hazardous, dangerous; failure waiting for us at each step; so many traps and so many possibilities of being defeated rather than being successful.

So, we should never miss any opportunity of living, of being alive, of being responsible, of being committed, of getting involved. We should not be cowards. We should face life and encounter it with courage. And then slowly something new inside of you will start to emerge. Yes, it takes time. The Skin Horse is right: ’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... Once you are REAL, you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.’ It is forever. But one has to earn it. Let me repeat it: in life, you cannot get anything free. And if you do get it, you will not value it as much as the things that you pay a lot for. You have to pay, and the more you pay for it the more you will get out of it, the more you appreciate it. If you can risk your whole life in love, great will be your attainment. Love will send you back to yourself; it will give you a few reflections on life. The first glimpses of it happen in love.  It will make you thirstier. Now you will know what is possible and now you cannot be satisfied with the mundane. The sacred has penetrated you; the sacred has reached your heart. God has touched your heart, you have felt that touch. Now you would like to live in that moment forever, you would like that moment to become your whole life.