Freeing Our Rabbits: Loving Without Attachment
If you really cherish someone, accept impermanence
One of my favorite stories as a child was The Velveteen Rabbit. I would cry every time I read it, but I would still read it again and again. I had a beautifully illustrated copy with soft, homey drawings, and I can still remember the exact way the pictures looked. Tears come to my eyes, even all these years past, thinking of how the story affected me so deeply as a child.
If you’ve never read this story, the synopsis is this: a little boy receives a velveteen rabbit, which he loves and plays with and who loves him in return. When he gets scarlet fever, all of his toys have to be destroyed and he leaves for the seaside to recover.
Because the boy loves the little rabbit so much, a fairy blesses the toy and makes him a real rabbit, and he soon makes friends with the other real rabbits around the boy’s home. The story ends with the newly-real rabbit seeing the boy from afar with a new rabbit toy, and the boy notices a resemblance to his gone — but still remembered and beloved — velveteen rabbit.
As a child, the story made me cry because it ends with the boy and the rabbit forever separated — missing each other, loving one another, but now a part of two separate worlds. The rabbit, as a part of nature, now has…
