What is Real?

Introducing Davin Carr-Chellman
by Michael Kroth

With this post "What is real?", I introduce my friend and colleague, Davin Carr-Chellman. Davin and I are both faculty members in the Adult, Organization Learning and Leadership program at the University of Idaho. Importantly for this column, he and I are both partners in conducting collaborative research about profound learning, the profound learner, and profound living. We will update you about those projects as we go along.

Most importantly, Davin brings a deep understanding of philosophy, adult education, and spirituality along with years of hands-on experience in our field, which have enriched me as we have worked together. He has a commitment to making a positive difference in the world, to teaching and training, and to lifelong learning. Find more about him on the "Contributors" page.

Even more most importantly for me, he is a joy to work with, is enthusiastic, smart, a hard worker, makes me laugh regularly, and has high integrity and character. He is the kind of person who makes the people around him better.

Davin will be a regular contributor here at Profound Learning, sharing (at least) monthly essays on topics he wants to explore with us. He is a busy fellow and I am so very grateful he will be a part of this little adventure.

"What Is Real?"

by Davin Carr-Chellman

"The skin horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

'What is REAL?' asked the [Velveteen] 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 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 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'"

The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

I offered this meaningful snippet from the Velveteen Rabbit as part of a toast to celebrate my brother's wedding. They are a wonderful couple and, on the day of their vows, had been together for 20 years, unmarried for many reasons, the most prominent that the state didn't recognize same-sex marriage. Legalization opened the door and they walked through, primarily as a celebration of civil rights. It was a wonderful day. In retrospect, however, a wedding toast is better spent on platitudes that won't confuse or surprise an audience. Rule number one for public speaking: know your audience and be sensitive to the context. In other words, a wedding toast should offer what's expected. The ontological reflections of these nursery room toys are beautiful, though, and do great work helping readers celebrate life and love. It's deeply counter-cultural, and uncomfortable, to elevate suffering, raw emotion, and patient endurance to aspirational status, as have the rabbit and the horse. In the context of relationships, what is REAL is what becomes; it's earned, not simply given. Real things transcend the vicissitudes of superficiality, anchoring us instead to more stable terrain. What are the ways of being to become real? The paths to authenticity and substance and depth are many, I suspect. In this passage alone, more is offered than a single pass can digest. Velveteen isn't even real velvet; it's made to be rubbed, and loved, off. Counter-intuitively, its value increases as it's surface shines less brightly. There is joy and comfort in this story. There is also pain and sadness. And more than a little bit of truth.