Relationships develop over time, when people share in a real way, so each person can know the other, rather than one person trying to meet the expectation of the other. It takes time to really listen and ask questions, to understand who that person really is.
We respond to people the way we think they think, without really stopping to listen and receive them as the person they are. One of my favorite books, The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams, explains becoming Real.
What is Real?
“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,” 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 love you. Then you become Real.”…
“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.”
{Photo credit: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/williams/rabbit/rabbit.html}
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