Change is hard... but good? [Part 2]

When I think about change, I remember this picture by Norman Rockwell... I suppose the caption would say, “Change isn’t always good”, playing off the commonly held opinion that "Change is good."

It’s a phrase that was put to use most recently by President Obama as he campaigned for the White House. He was promoting change: left, right, and down the center. He made promise after promise regarding the changes he would make, and has gone on to try and follow up on those promises. I guess to this I would say, "Change is good, as long as it's in the right direction."
The funny thing is, when I was a kid, some of my favorite books were about change: Peter Pan, The Steadfast Tin Soldier, and The Velveteen Rabbit. I want to end this post by giving you a section of The Velveteen Rabbit, a story about a boy who got a toy rabbit for Christmas, and how the rabbit became real. As you read this, look for it’s correlation to life. I think it speaks.

“What is REAL?” asked the rabbit one day. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said 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?”
“Sometimes.” 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, or bit by bit?”
“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. 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 rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called Real happened to him. He longed to become Real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things happening to him…
Time passed, and the little Rabbit grew very old and shabby, but the Boy loved him just as much. He loved him so hard that he loved all his whiskers off, and the pink lining to his ears turned grey. He even began to lose his shape, and he scarcely looked like a rabbit anymore, except to the Boy. To him he was always beautiful, and that was all that the little Rabbit cared about. He didn’t mind how he looked to other people, because the nursery magic had made him Real, and when you are Real, shabbiness doesn’t matter.