The Velveteen Rabbit

‘What is REAL?’ asked the rabbit one day…

The Velveteen Rabbit is a 1922 children’s book. A boy receives a rabbit for Christmas one year. Initially the rabbit is ignored. More exciting toys are preferred. The Skin Horse explains to the Rabbit what it is to be real:  

‘Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child really loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’

Yesterday’s news told Amanda Cole’s story…

When she was fifteen she experienced a peculiar spasm at the back of throat. This ‘vocal tic’ was her first awareness of what later was diagnosed as Tourette’s Syndrome, a condition that causes people to make sudden, repetitive sounds or movements.

She’s now thirty-two-year-old Dr Cole, a married mother and assistant professor in sociolinguistics at Cambridge University.

‘…once you are real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.’  

American inventor and businessman Thomas Edison, invented the electric light bulb, the phonograph and early motion pictures. Edison famously said: ‘I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.’

The Velveteen Rabbit is loved by the Boy for many years ‘He loved him so hard that he loved all his whiskers off, and the pink linking in his ears turned grey, and his brown spots faded. He even began to lose his shape…’

Amanda Cole says she still retains ‘some residual shame’ about her condition: ‘I felt Tourette’s would ruin my life, now I teach at Cambridge’

In a world that demands success, popularity and beauty, Velveteen Rabbit, Amanda Cole and Thomas Edison teach me that failures can be successful, ugliness can be beautiful, and that love brings acceptance, authenticity and Reality.

‘…He scarcely looked like a rabbit anymore, except to the Boy. To him he was always beautiful… He didn’t mind what he looked like to other people, because…when you are Real shabbiness doesn’t matter.’