Everything we call ‘real’ is made of things that cannot be regarded as ‘real.’ –Niels Bohr, physicist
When my daughter was young I purchased a copy of The Velveteen Rabbit; it became one of her favorite ‘read it again to me, papa’ stories. I still have the copy after these many years.
To recap this wonderful story: a stuffed bunny becomes and remains neglected and its sadness grows as it listens to the newer, more expensive toys boasting about their place in the order of toys. The bunny, immersed in its sadness, turns to an older toy, the wise elder Horse and inquires: ‘What is REAL?’ ‘Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?’
Like all powerful life-questions, the Rabbit’s entire future rests on the Horse’s reply. Each of us can relate for each of us yearn to be real and we desire to know what is real. Tears still come to my eyes when I re-read the Horse’s reply: When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’
Today, more than ever before in history, we often wonder what is ‘Real’ (think of all of the prophets of ‘fake news’). With increasing frequency, we are less and less sure that what we see – a photograph, a computer image, a You-Tube clip – is ‘Real,’ or has it been manufactured. Like the Velveteen Rabbit we are not sure and we don’t have the wise Horse to turn to. We watch a movie and wonder what has been digitally added. We watch a commercial on T.V. and wonder what the model really looks like. Deep down inside we know that our lack of knowledge does matter . . .or does it? We become confused, if not outright disturbed. We find ourselves asking: What can we really trust as being real?
To complicate matters, we don’t have the time, nor the inclination, to try and figure all of this out. One reason, perhaps the main reason, is that all of this comes at us with tsunami-like force; it washes over us moment to moment. How can we possibly sort it all out even if we try to do so?
Yesterday a good friend was trying to be helpful and sent me not one link to a sight that might help me but five links and each link contained other links…I was quickly whelmed over and had to withdraw from my search. Then of course, there is e-mail, twitter, face-book and an increasing amount of information that comes to us via other social media. We don’t even know if the ‘facts’ on Wikipedia are true and Real (well, we do know some of them are not ‘real’ yet we do not know which facts are ‘real’).
The issue it seems to me is not ‘can we make sense of all of this’ but do we want to – it seems that we don’t. How could we? If we are not able to know – or more likely, we choose not to take the time and use the energy to find out – then what is the result? Do we become lazy? Do we choose not to do the work that would help us discern? Do we resign our response-ability? Do we have a greater tendency to avoid ‘moral’ distinctions because we have opted out of making ‘reality’ distinctions? If it doesn’t matter whether or not I uncover the deceptions presented to me do I then take another step and say that it doesn’t matter whether I deceive myself, or you?
C.S. Lewis has offered us some hope. Many years before our media-age he wrote: ‘In fact we should never ask of anything ‘Is it real?’ for everything is real.’ Websites are real, fantasies are real, dreams are real, and acts of the imagination are real.
As the ancients reminded us so many times, begin with self – examine ourselves to see if we have given up on the virtue of discernment. What excuses am I using in order to not examine my own self? I can only change what I can control and what I can control is how I develop and how I present myself to my world. In this case, it really is all about ME; it really is about how ‘Real’ I choose to be.
Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing. –Abraham Lincoln
Searcher-Seeker 