“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or 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 Velveteen Rabbit
My cousin bought me a print with the words above a few years ago for my birthday. It’s a lovely canvas that hangs just above my bed. I thought about it again this week after reviewing the post calvin year-end compilations, which so beautifully summarize this space for stories of twenty-ness, which are really stories of becoming.
My favorite thing about the wisdom of the Skin Horse is that nothing follows “become.” There’s no blank to be filled in, no specific objective. The truth that hanging word grasps is more expansive, more ethereal, more important than any one adjective or noun. Our long lives, he suggests, are to be spent in this progressive mode of actualization, which may well require our hair to be loved off, and our joints to become loose, and our eyes to go dim.
Of course, at the outset of your twenties you really don’t know anything. I recently read a journal entry written in the first six months of my full-time employment that started with “Just kidding! I can’t do any of the things I thought I could.” I laugh reading it now, but that mostly sums up the immediate post-college experience. After that comes a lot of arduous skill building and reflection and figuring-it-out. This quote hanging above my bed brought comfort many nights as I changed into pajamas and plugged in my phone and wondered if I had made any progress at all that day. It gave me hope that you do become, but that it takes a long time, and that the becoming is not without cost.
The cost and effort have never been the hard part for me. I’m a challenger by nature and I’m drawn to tasks that push my limits of capacity. It’s the time part that I always get hung up on. For me, unrealistic timelines have been a way of life. I wrestle with a constant fear of falling behind and work with often panicked urgency to achieve and accomplish and become.
I’m grateful for skiing and sailing because they have provided opportunities to build skill on inter-generational teams. These teams provide visual evidence that the expertise I long to build comes through effort, yes—but also, unavoidably, with time. Sometimes I have tried to force the process with extra studying, which doesn’t hurt anything, but I can read about backboarding someone all day and still be totally inept when it comes to actually doing it. Some parts of becoming are indivisible from experience, and like it or not, experience takes time.
At work I’ve been challenged with early leadership, managing a team of 150 before I had crested twenty-five. I’m grateful for the incredible opportunity to lead and to grow skill as a people manager, but have had to thoughtfully balance the important humility of being a young manager with the confidence to actually do the job. Spaces like skiing and sailing have provided a helpful counterpoint, with space to truly be the novice and to accept mentorship and coaching regularly. As I think about continuing to build my life, I want to always have at least one activity where I’m the beginner. I never want my life to get so small that I am the expert or coach in every arena.
This is the harder road, I think. Sometimes I wish I could be more easily contented, but the mystery of becoming, and the wonder of what that might look and feel like pulls me on through the next challenge, or the next session of hard coaching. Knowing that every day of lived experience is building towards that goal, and that the especially hard ones gain extra ground is a fortifying thought, and one I never want to lose sight of. You become. It takes a long time.
Ansley Kelly (’16) makes her home in Rochester, NY, where she delights in short, sweet summers spent sailing and long winters spent skiing at her favorite mountain. Between outdoor adventures, you can find her buying books more quickly than she can read them and indulging in mid-morning naps. She works for Wegmans Food Markets where she finds purpose and joy in feeding her community and the wider world.
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As usual, Ansley – perceptive and (self) insightful.
Self-awareness has so much to do with becoming ‘real’ – so long as our introspection impulses don’t spiral down into obsession, denying us the experience of grace and the ability to live boldly.
Keep your snow shovel handy up there!
As someone whose hair has been loved off(that!) and joints kinda loose, I am still developing skills – I put a rubber roof on my garage a month ago, never did one of those. But I have found that I am not intimidated by much these days, last year I learned accounting .
I wish I could write as beautifully as you. So keep learning and living your best life, and of course making cookies. The confidence will come, and make you more fabulous.
Becoming…this is such a wonderful thing and it always lasts a lifetime. “A progressive mode of actualization.” I love that! I’m 58, and I’m as “becoming” as I was in my 20’s. Everyday is equally-opportunity.