Not to be a complete parody of myself, but I’m gonna open this one by talking about the Velveteen Rabbit.
In case you haven’t read, this kid gets a velveteen rabbit for Christmas and he loves it desperately, until he gets new toys: toys with gears and mechanisms, fancy toys which replace the rabbit, toys which strike the boy and the rabbit both as being more Real than a velveteen rabbit. But “Real,” imparts a veteran toy of the boy’s to the rabbit, is a state of being that comes when one is loved: “real isn’t how you’re made,” the horse (the toy is a horse, I don’t make the rules) says, “real is a thing that happens to you”.
He consoles the rabbit that toys will be played with and put down and forgotten about, but something which one loves is never obsolete. And then one night, the boy gets sick, and his nanny brings him the rabbit in place of the toy he’s asking for, which he’s lost. Being handed his rabbit again, he falls in love once again. To me, at this point, the moral of the story is that you, as a toy, cannot depend on a child for consistent love. And then! The boy gets sick (scarlet fever, a literary canon of its own), and all the toys are sentenced to the furnace (toy story 3 vibes) because they’re considered infected. The velveteen rabbit is placed in a sack in the garden and he thinks back on his time with the boy, the time he spent being his companion, consciously to the boy or not. He cries, real tears, real tears from a velveteen rabbit, tears which fall into the dirt of the garden and instantly sprout a magical flower, out of which steps a beautiful fairy!!!!!!! She acknowledges the rabbit’s genuine bond with the boy, and brings the rabbit into the forest where he’s introduced to other rabbits (rabbits who were born real? I guess? Sorry to the horse?), and kisses him and suddenly he’s REAL! The rabbit joins his community in the forest, and then, next spring, sees the boy again (he’s all better), who remarks that this rabbit reminds him of his favorite toy he’d had to burn when was sick last year. Boom! Now I’m in tears, tears which involve me in this story in a weird, meta way, and which prove my love for the rabbit and the boy, and for childhood and rabbithood, and for fairies from flowers.
To recap:
-The thing that vests something with Realness is love.
-When you love something, you see it as real, and in turn, when you are loved, you are made real. So it’s a chain reaction of realizing each other.
-The proof of love is the act of crying.
-And the transformative thing, the actual thing that turns the object into Real is the kiss.
Let’s use this as a general formula: Love, Crying, Kissing and Being Real. “Magic Tears” is a term I’m making up to describe tears which come from profound love and which appear to transform. We’ve learned already that there is little evidence to support the act of crying being in itself cathartic: that the comforting that we receive when we cry, the hug, or whatever it is, is what gets us that relief. But this category of tears begs to differ. Kind of. As the Velveteen Rabbit positions it, the tears are not the transformation themselves, but a symptom or evidence of an internal transformation. Tears are proof of love; love is what makes the thing real.
DJ… Hit it.
Ok, so, you and I and Lizzo are familiar with the sensation of being so overcome with love that tears happen. Recently, my boyfriend and I were flying back from California and I was telling him about how I’d like to live together in a house with a chicken coop in ten-to-twenty years, and I started crying (loudly). It made me the target of some sideways glances. But if you and I and Lizzo had displayed such behavior in a religious context, it would make us the targets of EXTREME RESPECT instead. In the early days of the church, spiritual writers have documented what they call “the gift of tears,” which is a close and personal experience with God that “overflows into abundant tears”. This is a highly valued outpouring of emotion because it is the closest thing possible to proof. Tears prove love, and love makes something real. Those who wish my Velveteen Rabbit theory to fail will say WHAT ABOUT THE KISS?!!?!?. OKAY shhhh, so: in the Bible, there is the concept of a “holy kiss,” which is a kiss of greeting that demonstrates equality among [Christian] [men]. They believe so hard, there’s nothing to do but kiss about it. God loves them all equally, and the sentiment is mirrored in the way they treat one another– that is, a byproduct of being beneficiaries of God’s love comes the general love of humankind, sealed with a kiss! I really like this because I like broad, general, highly erotic displays of affection from the past, especially when it sort of goes over the heads of those participating, but I also like the whole notion of things being legitimized by love, crying and kissing. But this kiss is more than just a steamy social cue: it’s also a quick act of absolution and forgiveness, and in this context, I don’t think it would be a stretch to say that being forgiven of our trespasses vests us with the very human quality of being both flawed and capable of change– made more real!!!
And then there are tears which break down the glue of permanence, tears which want us so fully into humanity that they can fetch us from beyond life itself. The trope, nicknamed “swiss army tears”, refers to that one especially plump and sparkling tear which heals wounds and restores us to ourselves, even in the case of death. In fact, these tears go as far as to say that before our death, we were never real at all: but once the tears are shed, the love we garnered in our time alive is crystalized and we can come back, realer than ever. Often, it is also the act of dying that solidifies our places in reality. Does this sound crazy? You’ve seen it before. Snow White. Rapunzel. The Spongebob Squarepants Movie (you can skip to 4:05)!! The first Pokemon movie (agonizing). These tears often represent a major change of heart, a moment of pivotal recognition or absolute surrender. It’s then through death that these characters become more human, and these tears open the portal to this new dimension of Realness. I’d argue that the “kiss” here is the new appreciation these characters have for being alive, and the love-forward approach to living they adopt as a result of almost being dead forever. It’s a daily, endlessly renewable kiss.
The catch with these is that for these characters, to cry is a necessarily rare occurrence. I certainly cannot expect to be delivered into humanity by every event of crying. I’d be transcending like, every day, and I assure you that too many of my cries are completely stupid for that to be the case. But I wonder if you can think of an instance in your life where a single cry has catalyzed a complete paradigm shift? I wonder if you’d tell me about it? I’d love to hear from you anyway. This feels like an appropriate point to check in. Lemme know!
Hi Charlotte! It’s Karen from Ptown. I read this and your fabulous story to bring back horse transportation. This one says so much about love and loss and depth that it’s a tribute to how nuanced your writing and your own depth is! Yay! 💜
Big fan of this essay!! And the SpongeBob movie