Realness

Here's a blurb I wrote a few years ago trying to encourage my mass communication students to get out of their comfort zones and talk to "real people."

(I frequently require them to interview at least one "real person"--defined as not someone who is a student--for their writing assignments. Do this to try to get students out of their comfort zones.)

On "realness":



I'm often asked (or maybe challenged is a better way to put it) by students in my mass communication classes what I mean by a "real person." I try to explain that (no offense meant) students are NOT really real.
 


In one sense, no one is ever entirely real. But if you're older, say at least 40 or 50 or 60, you likely are on your way to becoming real.
 


A real person, as I see it, is someone who has had his or her fair share of failure or disappointment in life, who has been beaten down or rejected but who has also risen back up and learned to overcome deep depression or the downsides of life. Part of being real sometimes involves having someone you love say they know longer care about you or don't want to be with you.

A real person knows, from personal experience, that life is full of disappointment and that sometimes, "failing forward" is the best he or she can do. 
 
A real person has been taken apart and has put himself or herself back together again and is stronger for having been through turmoil, rejection, defeat, depression or failure.
 A real person may have had his or heart out of rhythm and had to get it shocked back into rhythm (recent personal scary experience at Piedmont Medical Center). Or even scarier: had his chest cut open and two of his arteries snipped and bypassed so blood could course more easily through his body.

A real person is humble but strong, never haughty, and always trying to learn. A real person, always trying to be a good listener, knows probably only that he or she still has a lot to learn. A real person knows that the best things in life are free and that everyone on this planet has dignity, worth and something to offer.
 


Realness often happens very slowly--almost glacially.

I am reminded, when I talk about "real people" in my classes, of the classic children's book "The Velveteen Rabbit," by Margery Williams.
 


In that book, two stuffed animals, a Skin Horse and a Rabbit, converse with each other in a children's nursery. 
 
Old, bedraggled and on his last legs, The Skin Horse wore a patched, ragged brown coat, and children had pulled out most of the hairs in his tail, making them into string bead necklaces.
 


Rabbit: "What is REAL? Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
 


Skin Horse: "Real isn't how you are made. 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."


Rabbit: "Does it hurt?"
 


Skin Horse: "Sometimes. . . When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."


Rabbit: "Does it happen all at once, like being wound up, or bit by bit?" 


Skin Horse: "It doesn't happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or who 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." 



Food for thought about being a Real person or on becoming a Real person. Good luck to all of you as you evolve into "realness."