“Prove yourself brave, truthful, and unselfish, and someday you will be a real boy.” ~ The Blue Fairy
I’ve been thinking about Pinocchio a lot lately. Not just the lie detecting growing nose part of the story, although I can’t help thinking how handy it would be if the deceitful were exposed by an obvious physical deformity every time they told a lie. It wouldn’t even have to be a permanent affliction.
The part of Pinocchio I’ve been mulling over is the wooden puppet’s character arc: his desperate need to identify as a “real boy.” It’s made me think about how obsessed we are about who, or what, is “real.” (Note, we rarely ask these questions about ourselves, just other people.)
Who is a real American?
Who is a real Christian?
Who is a real man or woman?
The answers to these mostly subjective questions determine how we treat people and whether we give them any value in our social systems. I’m realizing most of us have never really thought through these things for ourselves. Oh, sure, we can parrot the soundbytes we hear and recite the pat answers we’ve been told our whole lives, but have we really examined what we believe?
Is a real American one who was born here? One who speaks English? One whose ancestors came from a particular country at a particular time? Does a real American only live in a city or in the country?
How do you define a “real” Christian? Is it someone who exhibits Christ-like behavior, or someone who wears a cross? Is it someone who attends a church? Which one? Is it someone who’s been baptized? But were they dunked or sprinkled, because some will say one is real and the other is not.
Does a real man have to have a scruffy beard and drive a truck? Does a real woman have to cook homemade meals and only wear dresses? What about the men who are better cooks and the women who drive trucks?
Do you see where this is going? When we start trying to define what makes us a real fill-in-the-blank, we get caught in this whittling pattern, excluding and dividing and “othering” until there’s no one left who meets our rigidly structured definitions outside of ourselves.
And that brings me back to Pinocchio. How did Pinocchio finally become a real boy? At long last, after many trials and tribulations (mostly self-inflicted by making bad decisions) he proved himself brave, truthful and unselfish. Those were the only requirements.
Being real was never about appearances, it was all about character.
Oh man, we’ve got a long way to go. Where’s Jiminy Cricket when we need him?
