Most of the Faerie tales i've looked at in depth recently have been quite the conventional sort. This definitely is one of my favorites though it is hardly thought of when one lists conventional faerie tales. The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams was published fairy recently in 1922 and yet for me resides in a place among the best loved of all time.
For those unfamiliar i will recap. The Velveteen Rabbit is a Christmas gift for a young boy and seems in the first few pages to be more of a decoration of the family Christmas tableau than truly a gift for a small boy. In fact while the boy thinks it's cute for a few hours the minute the unwrapping of the real toys start it is forgotten and remains that way for quite some time. The rabbit is fine with this though it is made clear that this is the result of not knowing any better way of existence than to be in the nursery closet. All the other toys pretend they are great and the way they assure themselves of their greatness is by making the Rabbit feel increasingly insignificant and unwanted. Much like children often... no i cannot pretend this practice is only done in childhood circles. We all know of people of varying ages who draw their idea of their own value and self worth from the way they put down others. The Rabbit does have one good and true friend in the nursery, an old horse who is wise from years of experiences and always tells the truth as he knows it even when it is not what the Rabbit wants to hear. It is from the horse he first hears about "real" and the process of becoming real. "'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..." Soon after the boy can't find his favorite toy to sleep with so his Nana picks up the Rabbit and hands it to him to sleep with instead and the boy becomes used to sleeping with the Rabbit in his arms... and eventually the Rabbit becomes used to it as well.All that spring and summer the boy takes his Rabbit outside to play with him and they have great adventures. late in the summer a real rabbit comes upon our Rabbit goes up to him and sniffs him and says to the other rabbits that No, he isn't real. This greatly upsets our Rabbit and he is quite unsettled by the rejection until the boy comes back and takes him inside.
The boy becomes deathly ill with scarlet fever and all the while through holds on to the Rabbit. He recovers and while planning to take the Rabbit with him to the seaside with his family he is told that all of his things must be burned to prevent him from being reinfected... especially his Rabbit. While waiting for the fire in a sack with other toys and books and linens a fairy appears and as a reward for being such a good toy she turns him into a real Rabbit.
Okay now that we are caught up... We all have something we want. Something we will do practically anything to obtain. In fact i do venture that while what we want differs wildly from person to person it does stem back to these two desires. To be loved...and to be real. I'm not quite intending that to come off like an '80's hook. When i say "to be real" i mean that we all have something we are striving for that will make us feel validated in a way that we cannot validate ourselves. That lovely Id sitting in our brain demanding us to obtain things that make us give up the dopamine. The Id wants us to feel all good all the time. It's what weaves for us our richest tapestry of desires. The object of our deepest longing in the center of it all surrounding that a picture of us as the paragon of all that we feel society would desire us to be.
For me the most touching part of this story is the early conversation between the Rabbit and the Horse. If someone loves you... Really loves you... for a very long time... not just to play with... It can be easy to feel like a plaything. Especially when people, not hint but SAY you are exactly that to them. and the upset and the anger and the hurt at hearing this lines up quite well with the rabbit in the field who goes up to our Rabbit sniffs him then yells to his friends that no, this is NOT a real rabbit. To have someone tell you to your face that you aren't real can't help but make you feel anything other than indignant and possibly invalid. It is perfectly reasonable to want validation and perfectly reasonable to expect and try to get all of the validation you need internally. In fact it is most likely the best and most consistent way to receive it. but for me, and i don't think i am alone in this, external invalidation calls up a craving for external validation. And just like a naturally occurring time worm hole would need an equally reciprocating time worm hole butted up against it to give it the smallest amount of stability to continue to exist so sometimes our belief in itself on hearing harsh marginalizing descriptions of itself can crack and disappear without equally reciprocating praise.
What does it feel like to be real? "Does it hurt?" asks the Rabbit. "Sometimes." As i've said earlier... no, love IS NOT pain. Regardless of what my favorite movie has to say on the topic, the love itself is not pain. It's all the other things we put ourselves through around the love. Those doubts that we don't deserve it, that they don't deserve the reciprocation that either party will remain fidelitous to the other, that they aren't using you, that you aren't just using them, that ... the list goes on and on and i've already explained how i feel about this. There isn't much to the human existence if you break it down into blocks of like, dislike and "that's weird". The happy and joyful things lift us up and satisfy that demanding Id... the non-happy crash us down and we cry, we plan, we hope, we try to fix it... and we fantasize, in an attempt to satisfy the Id our brain brings us lovely and tormenting images of perfect happy moments that will never exist. To me this harms the happy moments that do exist because even the best moments rarely surpass our dreamed perfections. One day i had a dream come true moment... I held on to something that was harmful because it was my dream... I couldn't see the harmful side over the screaming of joy in my head. It took 6 months for me to understand just how dangerous my dream come true really was. My dream couldn't and wouldn't harm me, but the real person absolutely could and did.
But what does it truly take to feel valid? In this society of image, telling us how we should look, what we "need" to be happy. How do you look your Id in the eye and tell it to go fly a kite? Is it even healthy to try?
The next spring a quite recovered little boy is playing in the woods behind his house and seems to recognize on of the rabbits that he sees as being his Rabbit. I can't help but enjoy that thought... the thought of being someone's Rabbit.
