What is REAL?

An excerpt from The Velveteen Rabbit:

"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 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."

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One of my favorite children's books. It was an excerpt in a book I was reading a few days ago. This is a quote from that same book:

"... we find that we are most 'real' in connectedness to others. At the core of our beings -- our innermost selves -- we long to feel special, understood, cared about. Loving and being loved makes us feel recognized, that we matter, that we're real."

I've been thinking alot about that recently, having had a recent exchange with a good friend on the topic, and including the above in a group email yesterday. Yesterday was again a reminder of just how much my friends mean to me, and how -- even though so many of them I know only through the medium of cyberspace -- they are the friends who are Real. They are the ones who have allowed me to be Real. Allowed me to be me... not who I think people want me to be or expect me to be. They are the ones who accept me for who I am, and don't "put me in a box". They are the friends who have taught me to trust, and with whom I have grown in so many ways. They are the friends that I know I can turn to when I need a listening ear or a shoulder to cry on or someone to pray for me, and they are the friends I can laugh and be silly with. And they know that I am here for them in the same way. Always...

And all but two of these friends I met in the same place. Is there a purpose in that? I believe so. :-)

To my friends: Josh, Alan, Amy, Carrie, Carmel, Trish, Christy, Ruthie, Sherry, Susanna, John, Matt, Dallas, Shauna, Lana, Joyce....

You have each touched my life in ways you will never know, and I am a better person for having known you. Some of you I've met {and you were just as Real in person ;-) }, others.... not yet. But maybe one day. :-)

Okay, enough sappiness for one day... lol. Have a good one. Much love to you all!

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Currently playing: Wherever You Will Go ~ The Calling